Black-Box Infrastructure Penetration Testing for a Large Investment Company

Client Profile

A large investment company based in Canada has expressed interest in performing a black-box approach penetration testing to identify potential vulnerabilities across its infrastructure. The company has over 300 external and 2000 internal assets.

Business Challenges

• Lack of a 24/7 vulnerability management solution to identify critical vulnerabilities
• The internal network was flat and could be reachable from any critical server or endpoint
• The Active Directory was not properly configured
• Critical vulnerabilities on internal IPs and domain controllers posed a risk to the overall network compromise
• Insufficient network segmentation allowed attackers to move freely across regions and escalate privileges
• Business continuity and disaster recovery plans were either outdated or incomplete, leaving the organization ill-prepared for major disruptions or cyberattacks
• Configuration management for critical infrastructure components lacked proper enforcement, exposing them to misconfiguration-based attacks

LTM Solution

• Performed grey-box pen-testing on internal infrastructure stretched across the USA, Canada, Europe, and Asia.
• Recognized external assetsʼ IP addresses via passive reconnaissance and identified internal IPs from the US/Can/EU/Asia regions.
• Collected employee details from previous data breaches via open-source intelligence (OSINT).
• Enumerated running external services to find and exploit possible vulnerabilities in a controlled manner.
• Enumerated running internal services to find vulnerabilities on workstations and networking devices.
• Identified Active Directory attack path and reported all the findings with possible patches, solutions, or workarounds. 

Business benefits

• Improved external infrastructure security that lowered the risk of external breaches by exposing less than 30% of the system to attackers.
• Reduced the risk of domain controller takeover by 90% through proactive measures against misconfigurations.
• Improved data protection measures by addressing a breach affecting over 75% of employee details.
• Improved regional network segmentation and restricted movement across the US/Can/EU/Asia regions, enhancing data locality and compliance.
• Reduced the attack surface by 33% by securing HTTP/s services against external vulnerabilities.
• Proactively defended against advanced persistent threat (APT) groups and prepared measures to counter advanced persistent threats.
• Strengthened internal network security defenses by lowering network compromise risk by more than 70%.