We look for ways that these weaknesses can be adapted to our use case to obtain the desired role (i.e., a foothold, escalated privileges, etc.). If we want to get a reverse shell, we need to modify the PoC to execute the code, so the target system connects back to us over (ideally) an encrypted connection to an IP address we specify. Therefore, the preparation of an exploit is mainly part of the Exploitation stage.

Prioritization of Possible Attacks

• we have found one or two vulnerabilities during the Vulnerability Assessment stage that we can apply to our target network/system, we can prioritize those attacks.
• Which of those attacks we prioritize higher than the others depends on the following factors:
  • Probability of Success
  • Complexity
  • Probability of Damage

1. probability of successfully executing a particular attack against the target. CVSS Scoring can help us here, using the NVD calculator better to calculate the specific attacks and their probability of success.
2. Complexity represents the effort of exploiting a specific vulnerability. This is used to estimate how much time, effort, and research is required to execute the attack on the system successfully.
3. Estimating the probability of damage caused by the execution of an exploit plays a critical role, as we must avoid any damage to the target systems.