Technical Training on Common Red Team Attack Scenarios During Major Event Security Assurance

Article Summary:
This article systematically examines eight major categories of red team attack scenarios during major event security assurance. It covers boundary breaches, social engineering phishing, supply chain poisoning, 0day/Nday exploitation, internal network lateral movement, data theft, DDoS attacks, and critical infrastructure targeting. Each scenario is analysed in terms of its attack chain and blue team countermeasures. The article emphasises the establishment of an attacker-perspective defence mindset and provides practical protection guidance for security operations personnel.

Categories: Penetration Testing, Red Team, Internal Network Penetration, Incident Response, Security Awareness

Executive Summary #

During major event security assurance, adversaries employ red team thinking to launch high-intensity, highly covert attacks against networks, systems, and data. This constitutes a concentrated test of the overall security protection capabilities of responsible organisations. It covers eight categories: network boundary breaches, supply chain poisoning, social engineering phishing, 0day/Nday exploitation, internal network lateral movement, data theft, DDoS attacks, and targeted strikes on critical infrastructure. Each scenario is analysed in terms of tactical intent, attack chain, typical techniques, and blue team countermeasures. The core principles of red team attacks are also summarised to help security operations personnel develop an attacker-perspective defence mindset and make thorough preparations for major event security assurance.

Chapter 1: Overall Situation of Major Event Security Assurance and Red Team Attacks #

1.1 What is Major Event Security Assurance? #

Major event security assurance refers to the high-intensity, high-level cybersecurity protection work carried out during major events such as national holidays, major political conferences, international summits, and large-scale sporting events. During these periods, attackers—particularly state-level hacker organisations and professional attack teams—concentrate their efforts on key targets. Their intent is to steal sensitive data, paralyse critical businesses, and create severe security incidents, thereby disrupting the smooth conduct of major events.

1.2 Definition and Role of the Red Team #

A red team is a professional security team that simulates the behaviour of real attackers for the purpose of conducting attack-defence exercises. Compared with traditional penetration testing, the characteristics of a red team are more prominently reflected in four aspects:

• Objective-oriented: The ultimate goal is to acquire core assets and achieve business impact, rather than merely discovering security vulnerabilities.
• Full-chain attack: The attack process covers the complete chain of reconnaissance, initial access, persistence, lateral movement, data theft, and impact generation.
• Stealth priority: The team pursues long-term lurking, low-signature penetration, and avoidance of detection by defenders. The attack duration may last for weeks or even months.
• Integration of social engineering: In addition to technical means, extensive use is made of phishing, spear-phishing, physical intrusion, and other social engineering techniques.

1.3 Characteristics of Red Team Attacks During Major Event Security Assurance #

1.4 Typical Attack Chain of Red Team Attacks #

Red team attacks generally follow a clear attack chain model. Understanding the attack chain is the foundation for effective defence:

Reconnaissance → Weaponisation → Delivery → Exploitation → Installation → Command and Control (C2) → Actions on Objectives

• Reconnaissance: Collect information on the target’s network structure, employee information, technology stack, and exposure surface.
• Weaponisation: Create phishing emails, malicious documents, and vulnerability exploitation tools.
• Delivery: Deliver the payload via email, web pages, USB drives, or the supply chain.
• Exploitation: Trigger vulnerabilities to obtain execution privileges.
• Installation: Implant Trojans, webshells, and backdoors to establish persistent access.
• Command and Control: Establish C2 channels for command and data transmission.
• Actions on Objectives: Conduct lateral movement, privilege escalation, data theft, infrastructure destruction, and cover-up retreat operations.

The core task of the blue team during major event security assurance is to set up detection and blocking points at every stage of the attack chain, thereby neutralising the attack at the earliest possible stage.

Chapter 2: Panorama of Common Red Team Attack Scenarios During Major Event Security Assurance #

Based on years of practical attack-defence experience and major event security assurance duty, red team attack scenarios during these periods can be summarised into eight major categories, covering multiple dimensions such as network boundaries, personnel, applications, data, and infrastructure:

The following sections analyse each of these scenarios in turn.

Chapter 3: In-Depth Analysis of Common Red Team Attack Scenarios #

3.1 Scenario One: Internet Attack Surface Breach and Boundary Vulnerability Exploitation #

3.1.1 Scenario Description #

On the eve of major event security assurance, the red team first conducts full-scale mapping of the target organisation’s internet exposure surface. The mapping scope covers domain assets, IP ranges, open ports, web applications, VPN devices, email systems, and cloud services. After identifying an exploitable boundary breach point, the red team uses known vulnerabilities or logical flaws to breach the boundary and obtain an internal network springboard.

3.1.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Reconnaissance phase: Use subdomain enumeration, certificate transparency logs (such as crt.sh), and search engine fingerprinting to map the target’s internet assets. Common tools include Subfinder, Amass, Fofa, Shodan, Quake, and Hunter.
• Vulnerability discovery: For assets such as web applications, OA systems, VPN devices, and email gateways, batch-detect known vulnerabilities (such as Struts2, Log4j2, Shiro, Fastjson, and Spring framework vulnerabilities). Simultaneously attempt to discover unauthorised access, default passwords, and logical bypass risks.
• Boundary breach:
  • Obtain webshells (such as Behinder or Godzilla) through web application vulnerability exploitation.
  • Exploit command injection or remote command execution vulnerabilities in boundary devices to gain device control.
  • Conduct weak password or password brute-force attacks against VPN/bastion hosts to obtain VPN login privileges.
  • Exploit cloud asset misconfigurations (such as object storage permissions, databases exposed to the public internet, or OSS bucket leaks) to breach the boundary.
• Establishing a foothold: Upload webshells, implant in-memory webshells (such as Lilac or Behinder memory shells), and establish tunnels (such as frp, nps, or ew).

3.1.3 Typical Techniques and Tools #

• Asset mapping: FOFA, Quake, Shodan, Hunter, CT-UNSS, OneForAll
• Vulnerability detection: xray, Nuclei, Goby, vulmap, CNVD
• Web exploitation: SQLMap, BurpSuite, Yujian, Nuclei
• Privilege maintenance: In-memory webshells, reverse shells, bind shells

3.1.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Before major event security assurance, conduct internet attack surface reduction: close unnecessary ports, decommission zombie assets, and reduce VPN/RDP exposure.
• Conduct vulnerability assessment and patch hardening for boundary devices, web applications, and VPNs.
• Deploy WAF, IPS, and IDS, configure blocking policies, and execute IP blocking against high-risk attack sources.
• Strengthen log monitoring and alarm linkage for web applications and boundary devices.
• Establish detection and removal mechanisms for discovered webshells and in-memory webshells.

3.2 Scenario Two: Phishing Emails and Social Engineering Attacks #

3.2.1 Attack Description #

Phishing emails are the most frequently used and most successful attack method employed by red teams during major event security assurance. The red team uses content such as “major event security notices”, “security exercises”, “bonus payments”, or “instructions from leadership” as bait. They deliver malicious attachments or phishing links to employees of the target organisation, tricking them into clicking links, entering account passwords, and thereby stealing login privileges for email, OA, VPN, and other systems.

3.2.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Information gathering: Collect employee names, positions, email addresses, and organisational structure information through social platforms, recruitment websites, and the target organisation’s official website.
• Weaponisation: Create malicious documents disguised as “major event security notices” or “patch upgrades” (carrying macros, OLE objects, or downloaders), or create phishing pages that imitate OA or VPN login pages.
• Delivery: Send emails in bulk, disguising the sender (forging sender addresses and sender names) and using technical means to bypass email gateway protection.
• Inducement: Exploit managers’ natural trust in major event security and security work. Create a sense of urgency or threat, or combine with benefit inducements to lower the target’s vigilance.
• Harvesting: After the employee completes the click action, further trick them into entering account passwords, or clicking phishing links and enabling macros to run malicious code.

3.2.3 Typical Phishing Types #

3.2.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Strengthen email gateway security detection: intercept similar domains, forged senders, malicious attachments, and malicious links.
• Conduct phishing exercises and security awareness training for all employees to help them develop the habit of “not clicking unfamiliar links and not casually entering account information”.
• Deploy multi-factor authentication (MFA) so that even if an account is compromised, the attacker cannot easily exploit it.
• Conduct risk monitoring of email accounts, focusing on abnormal login locations, abnormal download volumes, and abnormal forwarding behaviour.
• During major event security assurance, for sensitive content such as “major event security” and “patches”, clarify official unified release channels to prevent content from being forged and exploited by attackers.

3.3 Scenario Three: Supply Chain Attacks and Third-Party Risks #

3.3.1 Attack Description #

Supply chain attacks are an extremely destructive attack scenario during major event security assurance. Attackers indirectly intrude into the target network by compromising software vendors, outsourced service providers, third-party operations and maintenance vendors, development code repositories, and dependency packages. Because the various links in the supply chain generally enjoy high trust and have weak protection capabilities, such attacks can often bypass frontal defence lines and directly hit core targets.

3.3.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Upstream attack: Compromise the software vendor’s update server or signature system, and implant malicious code into software update packages.
• Development environment attack: Compromise developer computers, CI/CD pipelines, and code repositories to implant backdoors into source code.
• Dependency library attack: Poison open-source components and package repositories such as npm/pypi, waiting for the target to pull and install them.
• Third-party service attack: Compromise the endpoints or accounts of outsourcing companies, operations vendors, cleaning and security contractors, and other partners.
• Cloud service attack: Use cloud accounts, API keys, and cloud misconfigurations to intrude into the target’s cloud assets.

3.3.3 Typical Cases and Techniques #

Attacks launched through supply chain upgrade packages and open-source package poisoning are highly prevalent during major event security assurance. Attackers impersonate outsourced operations personnel, contact target employees under the pretext of “inspection” or “maintenance”, and implant disguised malicious tools. They also exploit weak passwords and unpatched vulnerabilities in third-party systems to intrude into the internal network, then gradually move laterally towards the core area. Alternatively, they exploit the lax permissions of development and testing environments to gradually expand their influence into the production environment.

3.3.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Establish a third-party supplier list. During major event security assurance, register, approve, and supervise supplier operations with two-person oversight.
• Configure least-privilege and time-limited privileges for outsourced personnel accounts, and implement behaviour auditing.
• Conduct integrity verification, signature verification, and permission control for code repositories and build pipelines.
• Establish a software bill of materials (SBOM) and conduct vulnerability management for dependency components.
• Implement strict isolation between development, testing, and production environments, and configure security baselines.

3.4 Scenario Four: 0day and Nday Vulnerability Exploitation #

3.4.1 Attack Description #

0day vulnerabilities (undisclosed vulnerabilities) and Nday vulnerabilities (publicly disclosed but unpatched vulnerabilities) are highly effective weapons for red teams. During major event security assurance, red teams typically carry a large number of exploitation tools for known vulnerabilities (such as Exchange, VPN, Weblogic, Spring, and Log4j). They also use undisclosed 0day vulnerabilities to directly attack core systems.

3.4.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Intelligence gathering: Track open-source communities, security advisories, and dark web trading channels to obtain intelligence on known vulnerabilities (Nday) or undisclosed vulnerabilities (0day).
• Targeted selection: Select matching vulnerabilities based on the target’s technology stack (such as the Spring framework, Log4j2 component, Fortinet VPN, or Exchange email system).
• Exploit construction: Use public exploits, self-developed tools, or modified existing exploit code to build the attack payload.
• Exploit delivery: Send crafted packets to the target system to trigger the vulnerability and obtain command execution privileges.
• Defence evasion: Bypass security detection through encrypted traffic, obfuscated encoding, and traffic shaping.

3.4.3 Typical Vulnerability Types and Impact #

3.4.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Establish a vulnerability intelligence acquisition and early warning mechanism, and conduct rapid assessment and remediation of Nday vulnerabilities.
• Conduct vulnerability monitoring for core components (using open-source scanners, commercial vulnerability scanning tools, or SCA tools).
• Host hardening: implement measures such as minimal installation, streamlined open services, timely patch installation, and disabling high-risk component features.
• Monitor web access records and system logs, and build attack signature detection rules.
• Formulate emergency response plans for 0day vulnerability risks. During major event security assurance, strictly implement the “isolate first, remediate later” disposal strategy.

3.5 Scenario Five: Internal Network Penetration and Lateral Movement #

3.5.1 Attack Description #

After obtaining initial access privileges, the red team immediately conducts internal network reconnaissance and lateral movement. The goal is to ultimately obtain privileges for core business systems, domain controllers, or access to critical data. Lateral movement is the most threatening link in major event security assurance attacks and best reflects the attacker’s technical level.

3.5.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Internal network reconnaissance: Use internal network scanning tools (such as Fscan, Nmap, or the internal network version of frp) to probe internal hosts, ports, services, and domain structures.
• Privilege escalation: Use local privilege escalation vulnerabilities (such as kernel vulnerabilities), service vulnerabilities, and misconfigurations to elevate privileges to System/Root.
• Credential acquisition: Capture passwords from memory (such as through Mimikatz), read configuration files, conduct LDAP queries, and export SAM/HASH values.
• Lateral movement: Use authentication channels such as PsExec, WMI, scheduled tasks, SCM, and RDP to complete jumps within the internal network.
• Domain attack: Launch attacks against domain controllers (such as DCSync, DSReplication, MS17-010, or BloodHound) to obtain domain administrator privileges.
• Persistence: Implant hidden users, backdoors, scheduled tasks, and services within the domain to maintain long-term access privileges.
• Actions on objectives: Access core databases, file servers, and business systems to export target data.

3.5.3 Typical Attack Techniques and Tools #

• Internal network scanning: Fscan, Ladon, NetScan, internal asset detection
• Credential acquisition: Mimikatz, Procdump, LSASecrets, WCE
• Lateral movement: PsExec, Impacket suite, SharpHound, BloodHound
• Domain attack: MS17010, DCSync, Kerberos attacks (Golden/Silver Ticket), Group Policy
• Tunnel forwarding: frp, SSH tunnels, Neo-reGeorg, HTTP tunnels

3.5.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Segmentation and isolation: According to classified protection requirements, divide the network into different security domains and implement vertical and horizontal isolation measures.
• Host hardening: Close unnecessary ports, disable weak passwords, and implement access whitelist management.
• Account auditing: Monitor abnormal logins, use of high-privilege accounts, and lateral connection behaviour.
• Centralised logging: Collect domain controller, server, and security device logs in a unified manner, and conduct timeline-based correlation analysis.
• Threat monitoring: Deploy monitoring and detection probes at key nodes such as domain controllers, databases, and operations channels. Use the ATT&CK framework to identify attack behaviour.
• MFA reinforcement: Implement MFA and bastion host controls for domain administrators and operations accounts.

3.6 Scenario Six: Data Theft and Data Security Destruction #

3.6.1 Attack Description #

During major event security assurance, the ultimate goal of the red team often focuses on core database data, personal privacy data, business secrets, and source code—these categories of high-value assets. Data theft attacks typically erupt after successful lateral movement and when privileges have reached a critical point. Attackers complete bulk data export in a silent and traceless manner.

3.6.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Locating data: Determine the storage locations of high-value data through databases, file server shares, network drives, and source code repositories.
• Bulk export: Use database export tools (such as Navicat, SQL Server Agent, or mysql dump) to complete data export. Compress files and exfiltrate them.
• Covert exfiltration: Use legitimate channels such as DNS tunnels, HTTP tunnels, cloud storage (OSS/S3), and email to complete data exfiltration.
• Trace cleaning: Delete operation logs, erase operation traces, and reset timelines to delay the discovery of the attack through tracing.

3.6.3 Typical Data Theft Techniques #

3.6.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Deploy access control and data loss prevention (DLP) policies for core databases and file servers.
• Monitor abnormal data export behaviour: focus on large file operations within short periods, bulk access behaviour, and access during abnormal time periods.
• Monitor various exfiltration channels: including email outbound, network drives, cloud storage, and abnormal traffic.
• Implement data classification and grading management. Use encrypted storage and encrypted transmission for core data.
• Establish complete audit logs for data access behaviour. During major event security assurance, further strengthen monitoring of data egress.

3.7 Scenario Seven: DDoS Attacks and Business Paralysis #

3.7.1 Attack Description #

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks exhaust the target’s bandwidth, system resources, and service capabilities by sending massive traffic or malformed requests, ultimately causing business paralysis. During major event security assurance, DDoS attacks are often used in combination with other business attacks to distract defenders and cover other attack operations.

3.7.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• Resource preparation: Prepare through botnets, renting DDoS attack services, or building attack nodes independently.
• Target reconnaissance: Identify specific attack targets, including websites, DNS, apps, and core interfaces.
• Traffic attack: Launch high-traffic attacks (such as SYN or UDP Flood) and targeted protocol attacks (such as CC attacks or HTTPS slow attacks).
• Combined attack: Use high-frequency, multi-round, multi-directional attack patterns to repeatedly suppress the target.
• Effect evaluation: Monitor target business availability and adjust attack intensity and direction as appropriate.

3.7.3 Typical DDoS Attack Types #

3.7.4 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Deploy professional anti-DDoS devices and services. Pre-configure protection policies and alarm thresholds.
• Conduct traffic monitoring for critical businesses during major event security assurance and reserve capacity redundancy.
• Distribute attack traffic through high-defence IPs, CDNs, and cloud scrubbing.
• Formulate DDoS emergency response procedures in advance, specifying traffic switching, rate limiting, and scrubbing strategies.
• For application layer attacks, coordinate with WAF, rate limiting, and behaviour detection for protection.

3.8 Scenario Eight: Critical Infrastructure and Industrial Control System Attacks #

3.8.1 Attack Description #

During major event security assurance, attacks against data centre infrastructure, power systems, cooling systems, operations monitoring systems, and industrial control systems (ICS/SCADA) must not be underestimated. Such attacks are often associated with APT organisations and state-backed hackers. Once successful, they not only produce physical impact but also cause extremely severe social consequences.

3.8.2 Attack Chain Analysis #

• IT-side penetration: First obtain an attack foothold through the IT network (office network).
• Boundary crossing: Use boundary entry points between IT and OT networks (such as firewall vulnerabilities, ferry attacks, or operations channels) to cross into the target control network.
• OT control: Launch protocol attacks against industrial control protocols (Modbus, S7, DNP3) and issue malicious commands to controllers such as PLCs.
• Physical impact: Tamper with target control logic, ultimately causing production interruption, equipment damage, or environmental anomalies.
• Infrastructure attack: Attack monitoring systems, access control systems, UPS, and other operations infrastructure equipment.

3.8.3 Blue Team Countermeasures #

• Physical isolation: Strictly isolate IT and OT networks. Prohibit direct exposure to the internet. Use one-way gateways for isolation protection.
• Least privilege configuration: Open ports on industrial control devices as needed. Configure protocol whitelists and application whitelists.
• Behaviour monitoring: Deploy industrial control security monitoring systems to identify abnormal commands and abnormal access behaviour.
• Backup and recovery: Regularly back up critical controllers and system configurations. Formulate emergency switching plans in advance.
• Personnel control: Mandate bastion hosts with auditing mechanisms for operations channels. Implement two-person operation rules and retain complete behaviour audit records.

Chapter 4: Summary of Red Team Attack Scenarios During Major Event Security Assurance #

4.1 Core Points in Attacks #

Based on the analysis of the eight major attack scenarios, the core points of red team attacks during major event security assurance can be summarised as the “five ones”:

• One careful reconnaissance: Attackers continuously collect target information before and during the event. Reducing the attack surface is the first line of defence.
• One attack entry point: All attacks require finding an entry point into the target system. The fewer the entry points, the harder the access, and the more detection layers there are, the greater the attack difficulty.
• One privilege escalation: The jump from low privilege to high privilege often reuses vulnerabilities and passwords. Privilege governance is the core of protection.
• One lateral movement: Lateral movement is the attacker’s highway. Network isolation and account control are key to blocking this step.
• One data exfiltration: Data exfiltration is the final kick of the attack. Data loss prevention and egress monitoring are the last line of defence.

4.2 Core Common Characteristics of Red Team Attacks #

4.3 Five Key Actions for Blue Team Defence #

1. Reduce the attack surface: Minimise internet exposure. Complete comprehensive assessment and entry point closure before major event security assurance.
2. Strengthen boundary and identity protection: Implement boundary protection plus zero-trust architecture to achieve continuous verification and dynamic authorisation.
3. Detection and response: Establish a closed-loop mechanism of detection, analysis, response, and recovery to compress attacker dwell time (FTO).
4. Data loss prevention: Implement data classification and grading control. Deploy DLP and conduct egress monitoring to hold the last pass of data security.
5. Emergency response and review: Maintain high readiness throughout major event security assurance. Conduct timely reviews and summaries to continuously optimise and improve the protection system.

4.4 Conclusion #

Major event security assurance attack-defence confrontation is a systematic engineering project of attack-defence confrontation and mutual growth. Although red team attack scenarios are diverse, their core logic remains unchanged: the entry point of an attack is the exposure surface, the bond of the attack is passwords and trust, and the end point of the attack is data and business. Only by conducting proactive exercises, continuous hardening, and pragmatic operations from a red team perspective can the blue team transform the place where attacks are most likely to succeed into the place where defence is most solid.

Chapter 5: Closing Remarks #

Red team attack scenarios during major event security assurance are constantly evolving, and attack methods are continuously upgrading. However, attackers always act around three core objectives: first, obtaining an entry point—using the exposure surface to break into the system; second, gaining trust—stealing identities and credentials; third, achieving the attack end point—stealing or destroying data and business. By securing these three core links, the security defence line can be firmly held. This training aims to help every blue team member establish an attack-to-promote-defence mindset, ensuring that during major event security assurance operations they can see it, defend against it, and handle it.

Appendix A: Self-Check Checklist for Red Team Attack Scenarios During Major Event Security Assurance #

Appendix B: Quick Reference for Common Red Team Tools and Detection Countermeasures #

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