In this lesson,
we're going to dive into the Empire and
PowerSploit frameworks,
which are popular tools
for automating various stages of an attack,
especially when you're working in Windows environments.
Now, these tools are useful for penetration testers
who need to perform complex tests,
such as privilege escalation, lateral movement,
and post-exploitation activities.
Both Empire and PowerSploit leverage PowerShell,
making them effective in environments
where PowerShell is prevalent.
Now, let's start with Empire.
Empire is a post-exploitation framework
that allows you to run PowerShell agents
without needing PowerShell.exe,
which helps evade detection.
Empire provides a robust set of modules
that you can use for various tasks,
such as credential harvesting, lateral movement,
and persistence.
Imagine that you've already gained initial access
to a system,
and now you need to maintain control
and move laterally within the network.
Empire can automate these tasks.
You can begin by setting up a listener in Empire,
which essentially is a server again,
that awaits for an agent to call back.
Here's how you would set up a basic listener.
You'll use the command, uselistener http
set Host http://your-ip-address execute
and then you'll put in your IP address,
and then you're going to hit the execute command.
Once the listener is running,
you would generate a payload
that could be executed on the target machine
to establish a connection back to your listener.
Empire provides several payload options
depending on the target environment.
After executing the payload on the target,
you'll have an agent connected to your Empire listener.
With this agent,
you can then run various post-exploitation modules.
For example,
to perform credential harvesting using Mimikatz,
you would run,
usemodule credentials/mimikatz/ logonpasswords
then hit "execute."
This command will extract credentials
from the target system,
which you could then use for further exploitation,
such as lateral movement or privilege escalation.
Now let's talk about PowerSploit.
PowerSploit is a collection of PowerShell scripts
that can be used for post-exploitation, reconnaissance,
and exploitation.
It's included in Empire,
but can also be used here independently.
One of the key uses of PowerSploit
is to perform privilege escalation.
For instance, if you need to check
for potential privilege escalation opportunities
on a Windows machine,
you can use PowerSploit's invoke all checks module
from the Privesc suite.
Here's the command you would run.
Import-module PowerSploit/Privesc Invoke-Allchecks.
This script will automate the process
of identifying common misconfigurations and vulnerabilities
that could allow you
to escalate privileges on the target machine.
Another powerful feature of PowerSploit,
the Invoke-Shellcode module,
which allows you to inject Shellcode
directly into the memory of a running process.
This can be useful for executing payloads and memory
without touching the disc,
helping to avoid detection by antivirus solutions.
Here's an example of that command.
Import-module PowerSploit/CodeExecution.
Then we're going to use the Shellcode flag.
Get-Content shellcode.bin -ProcessID 1234.
In this example, the invoke shell command
is used to inject Shellcode into the process with ID 1234.
Shellcode.bin is a file containing the Shellcode
that you wish to execute.
To tie empire and PowerSploit together,
you could automate an entire attack chain.
For example, you might use Empire to deploy an agent
on the compromised system,
and then use PowerSploit scripts
to further escalate privileges or extract data.
Here's an example of how I would do it.
First, I would try to gain initial access.
I would start things off by deploying an Empire agent
on the target machine.
Next, I would attempt to achieve privileged escalation
using PowerSploit's Invoke-Allchecks command.
I would try to identify potential escalation paths.
After that, I would try dumping credentials.
Once escalated, I would try Empire's Mimikatz's module
to dump credentials.
And then lastly, I would attempt lateral movement.
After obtaining credentials with Empire's built-in modules,
I would try to move laterally across the network
by using credential stuffing
if I was not able to identify the users that passwords
or hashes were associated with in the previous step.
So remember, both Empire and PowerSploit
are designed to make the post-exploitation phase
of an engagement more efficient and successful
by automating complex tasks,
like privilege escalation, credential harvesting,
and lateral movement.
These tools allow you to maintain control over a network
with minimal manual intervention.