Red Team Framework

Presented at the DEFCON27 Red Team Offensive Village on 8/10/19. From the dawn of technology, adversaries have been present. They have ranged from criminal actors and curious children to - more modernly - nation states and organized crime. As an industry, we started to see value in emulating bad actors and thus the penetration test was born. As time passes, these engagements become less about assessing the true security of the target organization and more about emulating other penetration testers. Furthermore, these tests have evolved into a compliance staple that results in little improvement and increasingly worse emulation of bad actors. In this presentation, we will provide a framework complementary to the Penetration Testing Execution Standard (PTES). This complementary work, the Red Team Framework (RTF), focuses on the objectives and scoping of adversarial emulation with increased focus on the perspective of the business, their threat models, and business models. The RTF borrows part of the PTES, adding emphasis on detection capabilities as well as purple team engagements. We believe this approach will better assist organizations and their defensive assets in understanding threats and building relevant detections. Read less