Red Team Tools

Red team tools help offensive security teams assess, test, and exploit vulnerabilities across the organization’s infrastructure, applications, people, and processes. Threat exposure management supplements these tools with real-time insights into adversary activities for more robust threat actor emulations. 

Flare and Red Team Tools

What is Flare’s threat exposure management (TEM) platform?

Flare’s continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) platform scans the clear web, dark web, and illicit Telegram channels for adversary communications that mention an organization or technologies in its environment. Additionally, it provides insight into source code leaks and supply chain attack monitoring that red teams can use when designing adversary emulations to test for vulnerabilities. 

How does Flare augment red team tools?

Red team tools help security teams build attack path emulations to test their environment’s security. Flare augments these tools by providing insights into real-world adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) so offensive security teams can more effectively look for vulnerabilities in their technology stacks. 

What are the key benefits of Flare for red teams?

Flare offers the following key benefits for red teams:

• Supply chain intelligence to identify third-party vendors targeted by adversaries
• Identity intelligence that red teamers can use to test credentials during emulations
• Map of the organization’s attack surface for a real time view of the  external attack surface so red teams can focus on testing high-risk internet-facing assets

Overview of Red Team Tools

What are red team tools?

Red team tools are technologies used by offensive security teams for emulating real-world adversary TTPs to test the organization’s security posture. Red teamers use these tool for:

• Network and application penetration testing
• Social engineering emulations
• Phishing campaigns
• Vulnerability exploits

By mimicking real-world attacker activity, the tools enable them to uncover vulnerabilities that may otherwise go unnoticed or untested. Regular red team assessments using these tools promote a proactive security mindset, ensuring that any vulnerabilities are addressed before real attackers exploit them.

How do red team tools work?

Red team tools employ various methodologies to simulate real-world attacks. They follow the same order of operations that a threat actor would use:

• Reconnaissance: gathering information about the organization’s infrastructure, systems, and vulnerabilities
• Exploitation: attempt to gain unauthorized access to systems or sensitive information using methods such as phishing, social engineering, or exploiting software vulnerabilities
• Lateral movement: simulating movement through a network, attempting to escalate privileges and gain access to higher-value assets

Throughout the red team exercise, the tools continuously assess an organization’s security controls and response capabilities to identify defensive gaps and improve incident response processes.

What are the limitations of using multiple tools and manual processes?

Utilizing multiple tools and relying solely on manual red teaming present several limitations, including:

• Lack of integration and compatibility between them, causing inefficiencies and increased complexity
• Difficulties in collecting and analyzing data’s different formats or reporting mechanisms
• Limited in scope and visibility when using limited resources to simulate attacks manually
• Lack of scalability as manual red teaming fails to keep pace with the organization’s expanding attack surface
• Time-consuming manual testing and evaluation processes become cost-inefficient
• Cybersecurity talent gap with team members of varying skill levels who potentially fail to identify all vulnerabilities

Why Are Red Team Tools Important in Today’s Cybersecurity Landscape?

What features to look for when choosing a red team tool?

When choosing a red team tool, you should consider whether it offers:

• Functionalities: wide range of capabilities, like network scanning, vulnerability assessment, and social engineering tests 
• Customization: settings and configurations to conduct targeted tests and focus on critical assets 
• Reporting and analytics: detailed reports highlighting vulnerabilities, remediation recommendations, trend analysis, and threat intelligence
• Integrations with other security tools: connections enabling holistic monitoring, like vulnerability management platforms and threat intelligence feeds

What are some free red team tools?

As an organization begins its red team journey, it can use some of the following tools:

• CALDERA: open-source scalable, automated adversary emulation platform from MITRE 
• Atomic Red Team: library of simple, focused tests mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework
• Metasploit: open-source framework with exploit models, payloads, data gathering modules, and data enumerating modules.
• Hydra: open-source brute-forcing tool 
• Hashcat: password cracking tool 
• Recon-ng: web-based reconnaissance framework 
• Wireshark: network protocol analyzer to inspect packets, identify potential security issues, and simulate various attack scenarios

How does Threat Exposure Management (TEM) supplement red team tools?

TEM supplements an organization’s red team tools by integrating into the security team’s technology stack, including solutions like:

• Security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration and response (SOAR) tools, like Splunk and Azure Sentinel
• Communication platforms, like Slack and Microsoft Team
• Threat intelligence tools, like ThreatConnect
• IT service management (ITSM) tools, like Jira

TEM streamlines red teamer assessments of potential weaknesses in the IT infrastructure, such as unpatched software, misconfigurations, or weak passwords.

By connecting to the overarching IT and security technology stack, organizations can test their detection rules and incident response processes by enriching their red teaming with information from:

• Dark web forums: dark, deep, or clear web mentions of the company or its assets so the organization can maintain a dynamic map of its external attack surface to identify potential assets for testing
• Anonymous sharing sites: password dumps, sensitive technical data, and personally identifiable information (PII) on Pastebin or other anonymous sites to test for vulnerabilities to brute force attacks
• Automated cyber reconnaissance: discovering, enriching, and prioritizing data for remediation to identify vulnerabilities, dramatically lower costs by removing any maintenance for tools, saving analyst time

Red Team Tools and Flare

Flare provides the leading Threat Exposure Management (TEM) solution for organizations. Our technology constantly scans the online world, including the clear & dark web, to discover unknown events, automatically prioritize risks, and deliver actionable intelligence you can use instantly to improve security. With Flare, offensive security teams can leverage dark web and illicit Telegram channel data to customize their adversary emulations based on real-world information affecting their organization. 

Our solution integrates into your security program in 30 minutes to provide your team with actionable intelligence and automated remediation for high-risk exposure. See it yourself with our free trial.