GLOSSARY  /  Lateral Movement

What is Lateral Movement?

Techniques attackers use to move from an initial foothold to other systems inside a network.

After landing on one host, attackers harvest credentials and pivot — via SMB, RDP, WMI, or pass-the-hash — toward high-value targets like domain controllers.

It maps to a whole tactic in MITRE ATT&CK.

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Part of the Ciphers Security glossary. Free reference for analysts, defenders & learners.