Lateral Movement refers to the techniques attackers use to explore and expand their access within a compromised network. After breaching an initial system, attackers rarely stop there. They move across internal systems, looking for accounts, assets, and opportunities that bring them closer to their goals.
This phase matters because it tends to happen quietly, under the radar. Traditional defenses focus on keeping intruders out; once inside, attackers take advantage of the freedom to blend into legitimate activity. Lateral movement lets them collect credentials, escalate privileges, and position themselves to control valuable systems without immediately raising alarms.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework (specifically tactic TA0008) highlights lateral movement as a distinct step in the attack lifecycle, and for good reason. It's often during this phase, not during the initial breach, that small incidents turn into major compromises.
Effective cybersecurity depends on recognizing and interrupting lateral movement before attackers consolidate their control. Security strategies that focus only on perimeter defense fall short here. Visibility inside the network, behavioral detection, and tight access controls are essential for limiting how far an attacker can move.
Lateral movement tends to happen quietly, but it’s rarely random. Attackers follow a deliberate pattern once they gain initial access:
Without lateral movement, a breach would often stay limited to a single machine. With it, attackers can escalate access, steal sensitive data, disrupt operations, or all of the above.
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What? |
How? |
Distinction |
|
Lateral Movement |
Navigating within a network post-compromise to expand access. |
Occurs after initial access and involves targeted progression across systems. |
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Initial Access |
The attacker's first entry point into the network. |
It precedes lateral movement and focuses on gaining a foothold, often via phishing or exploits. |
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Pivoting |
Using one compromised system to reach another otherwise inaccessible. |
It's a specific tactic used during lateral movement to cross boundaries. |
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Propagation (Worms) |
Automated self-spread of malware between systems. |
Unlike lateral movement, it’s not human-directed and doesn’t require credential use. |
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Privilege Escalation |
Gaining higher-level permissions. |
Supports lateral movement, but can happen on a single system without any cross-system traversal. |
Lateral movement doesn't begin until attackers have already broken through the perimeter, whether through phishing, exposed services, credential theft, or vulnerable applications. The first objective is understanding the environment. Attackers perform internal reconnaissance to map out where they’ve landed and what surrounds them. This includes identifying neighboring systems, user roles, trust relationships, open ports, and domain architecture. Tools used here are almost always native: commands like ipconfig, netstat, netsh.exe, or PowerShell queries let them map the network without standing out.
At this stage, attackers aren’t spreading yet - they’re building a mental map. High-value systems, weakly segmented areas, and misconfigured endpoints stand out as future targets. The initial machine serves as a quiet staging ground, often for hours or days, as attackers chart the best path forward.
Lateral movement depends on impersonation. To move deeper, attackers need valid credentials, preferably with elevated privileges. The process begins with credential harvesting: dumping passwords, password hashes, or Kerberos tickets from memory, files, scripts, browser stores, or cached sessions. On Windows systems, the LSASS process is a common target.
Not all credentials are equal. If the compromised user has limited access, attackers aim to escalate. That might involve exploiting local privilege escalation vulnerabilities, reusing domain-wide passwords, or hijacking session tokens. Tactics like Pass-the-Hash or Pass-the-Ticket allow them to authenticate to other systems without needing plaintext passwords. Golden Tickets, in particular, can unlock domain-wide access through forged Kerberos tokens - a powerful move if the attack goes undetected. The goal isn’t just elevation - it’s reach. An overlooked service account or shared credential can open access to entire network segments.
With credentials and a mental map in place, attackers begin moving. But this isn’t flashy - no malware detonation, no brute force. Instead, they log in. They connect through RDP, SMB, WMI, WinRM, SSH - the same tools admins use every day. The tactic here is “living off the land”: using what’s already in the environment to avoid tripping alarms.
PowerShell scripts, PsExec, scheduled tasks, schtasks.exe, reg.exe, or even certutil.exe may be used for remote execution. These tools don’t look suspicious on their own - that’s the point. Attackers rely on blending in, not breaking through.
Environments with poor segmentation or shared administrative credentials make this stage easier. If the same local admin password is used across multiple machines, lateral spread becomes trivial. And because attackers authenticate like any other user, detection becomes a matter of spotting behavioral anomalies, not signatures.
This process repeats with each new system compromise, creating an expanding web of access across the network. Attackers methodically move from system to system, collecting credentials and advancing toward their ultimate targets.
In the MITRE ATT&CK framework, lateral movement is categorized under tactic TA0008 - a broad goal encompassing numerous techniques. These include Pass-the-Hash (T1075), Remote Services (T1021), and Remote Service Session Hijacking (T1563), among others. The key is not the tool, but the method: accessing new systems using stolen credentials and built-in functionality.
While many modern attackers avoid malware in this phase, it's not excluded. Custom implants may be deployed to automate credential theft, establish persistence, or maintain control if access is interrupted. But malware raises risk - each binary is a clue, each process a possible flag. So, experienced attackers use it sparingly and strategically.
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Indicator |
Description/Example |
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Unusual internal traffic |
Connections between systems that don't usually communicate, often using SMB, WinRM, or RDP. |
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Suspicious authentication behavior |
Bursts of failed logins followed by a success; logins at odd hours or to unfamiliar systems. |
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Anomalous process chains |
Office apps spawning PowerShell, or scheduled tasks launching command shells. |
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System/service changes |
New scheduled tasks or services created across multiple hosts in quick succession. |
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Registry or file system anomalies |
Unexpected changes tied to persistence mechanisms. |
The MITRE ATT&CK framework provides a structured way to think about how attackers move after breaching a network. Lateral movement lives under tactic TA0008 and includes techniques like Remote Services (T1021), Use of Alternate Authentication Material (T1550), Remote Service Session Hijacking (T1563), and Lateral Tool Transfer (T1570).
Security teams use these mappings to align detection coverage with actual adversary behavior. If your environment only detects RDP abuse but not token reuse or SSH pivoting, you're not seeing the full picture. MITRE also helps analysts anticipate next steps, prioritize threat hunts, and communicate incidents more clearly using a shared language.
Catching lateral movement relies on stitching together fragmented signals across systems. This requires tooling that sees deeply and works together.
What matters is not just what each tool sees, but how they connect. SIEM platforms or custom pipelines that correlate events across sources can reveal patterns: for example, a credential dump on one system, followed by reuse on another, leading to service creation on a third.
Prevention starts with boundaries. Network segmentation - through VLANs, NAC (Network Access Control) , or microsegmentation - keeps compromises contained. One breached device shouldn't open doors across the entire infrastructure. Networks without segmentation create significant security risks, while segmentation builds friction.
Identity controls should be more than a checklist. Start with least privilege, enforced by role-based access, so people don't touch systems they don't need. Then make that access harder to misuse - multi-factor authentication helps, as does Just-in-Time provisioning that limits how long elevated rights stick around. Privileged accounts deserve their own management layer.
Zero Trust changes how we think about internal traffic. It stops assuming trust just because something's inside the network. Instead, each action is evaluated on who's asking, what they're doing, and where they're doing it from. It's not magic - but it's one of the most effective ways to shrink attacker mobility.
Hardening and patching are essential. Disabling unnecessary services, applying OS-level protections like LSA (Local Security Authority) hardening or SMB signing, and fixing known vulnerabilities closes off low-effort attacker paths.
Effective monitoring requires multiple complementary technologies working together. UEBA helps spot odd user behavior. NDR picks up strange East-West traffic. EDR catches native tool abuse at the endpoint. But the real power is in how these tools connect and correlate their findings.
The future of defense is adaptive. Machine learning helps flag behavior that deviates from the norm, without waiting for a signature. Threat hunting adds the human edge: asking “what if?” before a breach answers it for you. Deception tools like honeypots and dummy accounts add one more tripwire - not to stop the attacker, but to hear them coming.
Once lateral movement is confirmed - or strongly suspected - it’s time to act. At this stage, a well-prepared incident response plan should already be in motion, guiding teams through containment, investigation, and remediation.
Containment comes first. Use whatever controls are available - isolate affected systems through EDR, NAC, or manual disconnection. If protocols like RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) or SMB (Server Message Block) are being misused, shut them down at the firewall or VLAN level to limit the attacker’s movement. Revoke active sessions, disable compromised accounts (including service accounts), and block known command-and-control channels at the perimeter or host level.
As systems are being contained, start gathering evidence - but don't rush to wipe or reboot. Capture memory, pull logs while they're still fresh, and lean on live response tools if you have them.
Getting rid of the attacker takes more than a single move. Persistence can hide in scheduled tasks, odd user accounts, or registry tweaks. Reset credentials in sync, clear out anything unfamiliar, and where the damage runs deep - domain controllers, for example - rebuilding from a clean image is often the safer bet.
Understanding what happened means building a timeline. Use log data, endpoint telemetry, memory captures, and network traces to reconstruct the attacker’s actions. Windows event IDs like 4624 and 4625, Kerberos ticket logs, shellbags, and process trees help paint the picture.
Gather evidence from all relevant points - endpoints, servers, firewalls, authentication systems, and, if available, packet captures. Look for signs of stealth: newly created admin accounts, scheduled tasks with unusual names, or services that don’t belong. Identifying every compromised user and machine is critical for complete eradication.
Attribution - whether based on toolmarks, infrastructure, or behavioral clues - can inform your response, but is rarely the priority. The focus is restoring integrity and closing the door behind the attacker.
Recovery ends when defenses are stronger than they were before.
And where appropriate, consider deploying deception tools - honeypots, honeytokens, or dummy admin accounts. They won’t stop an intruder, but they’ll make them easier to detect early in their attack sequence.
Lateral movement has existed in cyberattacks for decades, but its role has shifted. Early malware like worms spread laterally using open shares or simple credential reuse. Over time, attackers refined their methods - adopting stealth, abusing legitimate tools, and adapting to more segmented and monitored environments. What was once a hallmark of espionage groups is now routine in ransomware, insider threats, and financially motivated breaches.
Today, lateral movement is a defining phase in many attacks. Mandiant's M-Trends report put the median dwell time at 11 days in 2024, and according to industry experts, lateral movement is present in most of the major breaches. Much more than a simple delay, the time spent inside the network is used for finding valuable systems, escalating access, and preparing for impact.
In the 2020 SolarWinds attack, lateral movement began in compromised on-premises environments. Attackers forged SAML tokens and used Golden SAML techniques to pivot into cloud infrastructure, moving between identity systems and gaining broad, persistent access. The 2021 Colonial Pipeline breach started with a single VPN credential. From there, attackers moved through internal systems using RDP and credential reuse, eventually impacting billing infrastructure and forcing a shutdown of operations.
NotPetya, though malware-driven, demonstrated automated lateral spread using the EternalBlue exploit and stolen credentials. It repurposed tools like PsExec and WMI to traverse networks at speed. Maze ransomware campaigns are another example - before encrypting anything, attackers used lateral movement to locate sensitive files and exfiltrate data. Encryption came later, after they were sure they had leverage.
In cloud and hybrid environments, lateral movement often exploits weak identity boundaries. Federated trust between on-prem and cloud (like Azure AD sync) or exposed APIs can create invisible bridges for attackers, allowing them to pivot between environments in ways defenders don’t always expect.
Enterprise networks present scale and sprawl. East-West traffic flows between systems are constant, and default trust relationships or inherited permissions often go unchecked, giving attackers room to maneuver without setting off alarms.
Endpoints are where it usually begins. A compromised laptop or server can open the door to cached credentials, remote admin tools, or session hijacks. From there, attackers move inward, often before anyone realizes access was lost.
In ransomware operations, lateral movement is about reach. Threat actors often seek out Active Directory to coordinate mass deployment - moving laterally first, then encrypting broadly for maximum leverage.
Malware campaigns use speed. Some strains, like worms or botnets, replicate laterally across networks automatically. These are less surgical than Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), but no less disruptive when defenses are flat or patching lags behind.
APTs use patience. Their lateral movement is human, deliberate, and strategic. The goal isn’t to spread fast - it’s to stay embedded, escalate quietly, and maintain access without drawing attention.
In industrial control systems (ICS), lateral movement can breach the IT/OT boundary. When attackers cross into SCADA layers or move down the Purdue Model, the risk becomes physical, interfering with devices that run factories, utilities, or transport.
5G architectures introduce new risks. If isolation between slices fails, lateral movement doesn't just cross devices - it crosses the network itself.
Bitdefender’s GravityZone Platform delivers a unified cybersecurity foundation that combines layered detection, response, and hardening capabilities - all essential in identifying and stopping lateral movement.
> Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) monitors and analyzes endpoint behavior to catch subtle indicators of lateral movement, including process misuse and unusual user actions.
> Extended Detection and Response (XDR) correlates signals across endpoints, networks, cloud workloads, and identities to reveal multi-stage lateral activity that isolated tools might miss.
> Network Attack Defense detects and blocks lateral spread via SMB, RDP, or WinRM, while spotting attacker reconnaissance and command-and-control traffic.
> Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) identifies suspicious identity usage and anomalous behavior patterns linked to credential theft and privilege escalation.
> Integrity Monitoring tracks unauthorized changes to system files, registry keys, and configurations often modified during lateral movement or persistence setup.
> PHASR (Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction) reduces lateral movement paths by limiting access to tools and privileges based on behavioral risk scoring.
> Patch Management closes vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to escalate privileges or move laterally across the network.
> Sandbox Analyzer evaluates suspicious files in isolation to uncover tools or payloads that might assist lateral spread.
> Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provides 24/7 expert monitoring, threat hunting, and coordinated response for stealthy, human-driven attacks.
Lateral movement is what happens after an attacker gets in. Instead of staying put, they start exploring sideways - hopping from one system to another, looking for accounts, data, or machines that bring them closer to their goal. Vertical movement, on the other hand, is about privilege - climbing from a basic user account to admin. One is about reach, the other about rights. They often happen together, but not always.
Yes - though credentials are the most common route, they’re not the only one. Attackers might exploit vulnerabilities to run code on other machines, hijack sessions, abuse exposed APIs, or take advantage of trust relationships between systems. Some tools are already in place waiting to be misused - especially if there’s weak segmentation or shared access. So while stealing credentials makes things easier, a determined attacker doesn't necessarily need them to move around.
It depends mostly on how the network is set up and how much that user can access. If there's little segmentation and permissions are too broad, attackers can reach more than you'd expect. But with least privilege, access controls, and proper monitoring, their reach can be limited to that one endpoint. That's the goal: keeping a compromise from turning into a crisis.