I still have a lot to learn about Cobalt Strike’s features, but overall it was an amazing tool to work with, and I’m sure I’ll be using it a lot in the future. What’s great is that you can spawn a session to any listener located on any team server to which you are connected. From the Beacon interactive console you can type spawn, which will prompt you to specify a listener to call back to, and viola a new Beacon is on it’s way. Rather than take control of that Beacon I simply had to request that a session be passed over to my team server using the spawn command. Sometimes it would turn out that another team member had a Beacon deeply implanted calling back very low-and-slow to maintain a long-term persistence on the same target. There were instances where I lost access (whether by accident or on purpose :), and needed to regain a foothold on a target. More on using PowerUp and Powerview can be found on blog here Team ServersĬobalt Strike supports the ability to connect to team servers to share sessions and other data which was especially useful during this engagement. Much more information about Beacon can be found on the Cobalt Strike blog. Chaining is a great way to egress data through a single data channel rather than each Beacon calling out through the firewall, and it gave me granular control of my data flows that I didn’t easily have before. One last feature of Beacon I would like to highlight it’s ability to chain connections over SMB. Some of my first post exploitation tasks soon became running PowerUp, Powerview, and Invoke-Mimikatz all through Beacon. I found that this new ability to run Powershell scripts over-the-wire changed my overall workflow. When I wanted to run an entire ps1 script it was as simple as typing, powershell-import, and then calling the newly imported function(s). Running Powershell commands through Beacon is as simple as typing, powershell. However, the most useful Beacon feature I discovered was it’s ability to run Powershell scripts from memory. It can tunnel Meterpreter sessions over it’s existing communication channel, inject into other processes, steal tokens, use golden tickets, and much more. Once implanted on a target, Beacon is able to covertly execute commands and other advanced payloads.
I used all three protocols during this job, and it was great to have so many options available, especially when combined with Cobalt Strike’s new Malleable C2 the variations on network signatures are endless. exe, dropper, staged) that use different protocols namely http, https, and DNS. You can generate a few different variations of Beacon payloads (e.g. I’ll go so far as to say that Beacon is the most advanced post exploitation payload commercially available.
More on that later.īeacon is Cobalt Strike’s asymmetric post exploitation tool, and for adversary emulation it is the tool to use. The real payoff comes later when you’re generating payloads and spawning sessions on various team servers the way Cobalt Strike manages all this is an amazing time saver. Setting up listeners is as simple as a few clicks and then specifying a name, payload type, IP, and port. ListenersĬobalt Strike is really good at taking care of the routine tasks for you. Beacon was the primary tool I used during this engagement so that’s what I’ll be focusing on in this post. In addition to providing a clean graphical interface to the Metasploit Framework, Cobalt Strike comes with it’s own advanced features including it’s own post exploitation tool called Beacon.
#Cobalt strike beacon hx flagging software
From the official website, “Cobalt Strike is penetration testing software that executes targeted attacks and replicates advanced threats.” If you’re familiar with Armitage then at first glance you should recognize the Cobalt Strike interface, but there is a world of difference between the two products. Cobalt Strike creator, Raphael Mudge, has compiled a blog with a wealth of information and I’m certainly not going to attempt to revisit everything here. While it’s fresh in my mind I just wanted to highlight some of Cobalt Strike’s features that made life easier on this particular assignment.įor those that have never heard of Cobalt Strike I highly suggest heading over to the official website and spending some time reading through all the information there. This particular engagement was all about adversary emulation, and as far as I’m concerned Cobalt Strike is the premier tool for that type of job. On a recent engagement I was lucky enough to be able to use Cobalt Strike on a sustained multi-week operation, and overall I was impressed with it’s performance.
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