Pivoting and expanding access to the network

In this recipe, we will leverage a host as a beachhead to exploit other hosts.

While this recipe may not sound appropriate for the topic of the chapter, one of the best ways of maintaining access to a target network is to have more hosts exploited that you can use for your communication channel. You can also have them use various forms of methods to reach out, so that if one is discovered you have access to others through different means. 

Getting ready

Let's ensure the following prerequisites:

• Your Kali Linux VM is powered up and you are logged in as root
• Your Windows XP VM is powered up on the host-only network

How to do it...

To complete this recipe, we will do the following:

1. Validate the IP addresses of your machines before we get started.
2. We are going to start with an already exploited machine in Armitage.

Note

We will be continuing from Chapter 7, Privilege Escalation in recipe Remotely bypassing Windows UAC, if you need assistance getting started...