7MS #303: Evaluating Endpoint Protection Solutions

I'm working on a fun project right now where I'm evaluating endpoint protection solutions for a client. They're faced with a choice of either refreshing endpoints to the latest gen of their current product, or doing a rip and replace with something else. I've spun up a standalone AD environment with ~5 Win 10 VMs and nothing on 'em except a current set of patches. The idea is I can assign each workstation VM an install of INSERT_NAME_OF_POPULAR_AV_VENDOR_HERE and have somewhat of a "bake off." Now what I'm finding is there are great sites like [AV Test](AV Test) or AV-Comparatives do a nice job of breaking down what kind of performance, features, and management offerings a given vendor has. But what I haven't found is some structured testing for "act like a bad guy" actions. I'm thinking things like: Mimikatz tomfoolery Lateral attacks with Metasploit shells Egress port scanning (to find an acceptable outbound port for C2 or data exfil) Jacking around with various PowerShell scripts and commands However, thanks to some awesome friends on Slack they pointed me to what looks to be a nice set of scripts/tests - many of which could be used to see what kind of behaviors the endpoint protection will catch. So coming up in part #2 of this series, I'll do a deeper dive into: RTA Atomic Red Team