Breach and Attack Simulation Gone Wrong: 4 Deadly Mistakes That Undermine Your Cyber Defenses

Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) is now a $1.5 billion market—but too many organizations are still doing it wrong. Despite investing in top-tier BAS tools, they’re overlooking critical blind spots that attackers exploit every day.

Let’s explore these four mistakes below. 

You Can’t Simulate Attacks Effectively if You Don’t Even Know Your Full Attack Surface

BAS is effective only when your organization has a complete picture of its known and unknown assets. 

For example:

Your security team performs BAS simulation on known assets like laptops and desktops that your employees use and finds out that many systems have Windows 10 21H1 (unsupported after December 2022) instead of 22H2. 

This version of Windows had many critical exposures. Here is the list:

Remote Code Execution (RCE):

• CVE-2021-34527 (PrintNightmare) – RCE via Windows Print Spooler
  
• CVE-2021-1675 – Another Print Spooler RCE
  
• CVE-2021-26419 – RCE in Windows HTTP Protocol Stack
  
• CVE-2021-26897 – RCE in Windows DNS Server
  

Privilege Escalation and Local Exploits:

• CVE-2021-34484 – Kernel memory corruption
  
• CVE-2021-31955 – Kernel info leak
  
• CVE-2021-36934 (SeriousSAM) – SAM registry exposure allowing local admin password theft
  

Security Feature Bypass and Info Disclosure:

• CVE-2021-34535 – RDP security bypass
  
• CVE-2021-40444 – MSHTML zero-day exploited via malicious Office docs
  

Legacy Protocol Risks:

• SMBv1 vulnerabilities – Including flaws like EternalBlue that are still exploitable if SMBv1 remains enabled

The security team proceeds to update Windows 10 21H1 to Windows 10 22H2, which fixes all of these vulnerabilities that an adversary could have exploited. They report this to management, which is satisfied with the knowledge that their assets are secure. 

But here is the problem.

While your security team remediated this specific exposure in the known assets—they were unaware that the employees are also storing and sharing sensitive files (Customer Data, Intellectual Property, Financial data, etc.) on Dropbox, which hasn’t been approved for storage. 

So, while the team successfully secured known endpoints, what about this unapproved cloud storage service?  The Dropbox sharing settings were misconfigured, and anyone with a link had permission to access those sensitive files. This exposure can be exploited by an adversary. 

Had the security team been aware of this unknown asset—the BAS simulation would have uncovered the misconfiguration, which would have been fixed before the adversary became aware of it. 

Unknown assets create blindspots. Your adversary will always target what you don’t monitor. 

If Your BAS Platform Isn’t Updating TTPS Regularly, You’re Just Testing Against Last Year’s Threats

BAS tools are only as current as the TTPs they simulate. If your platform isn’t regularly ingesting new threat intelligence, you’re essentially testing against last year’s threats—and missing today’s.

Many tools still focus on outdated malware families, deprecated exploits like EternalBlue, or overly simplistic attack chains. Meanwhile, threat actors have shifted to abusing trusted tools (like remote management software) and exploiting cloud misconfigurations, MFA fatigue, and zero-click vulnerabilities.

A 2023 ATT&CK Evaluations summary found that several major vendors failed to detect modern lateral movement and persistence techniques that real-world attackers now use routinely. If your BAS tool hasn’t integrated these techniques, passing its simulations offers little real-world assurance.

Outdated simulations can also breed false confidence—security teams may feel secure simply because they’re passing legacy tests. In reality, they could be blind to emerging threats like token theft in identity platforms, AI-generated phishing, or stealthy post-exploitation frameworks like Sliver.

And once the tool becomes stale, it risks becoming just another compliance checkbox—used to satisfy audit requirements while missing the point of proactive defense.

To stay ahead, choose a BAS vendor that updates TTPs continuously, maps to the latest ATT&CK coverage, and integrates fresh threat intel from active campaigns. Ask: When was the last TTP update? Does it simulate attacks targeting your cloud, identity provider, or CI/CD pipeline?

Because testing old threats is easy. Testing real ones is what actually matters.

Automation Without Red Teaming? That’s a Blind Spot

Automated Penetration Testing and Breach and Attack Simulation should not be seen as a replacement for human-led red teaming. Automated tools typically can’t recognize logic flaws in business processes—like exploiting a password reset flow to enumerate emails or bypass multi-factor authentication under edge conditions.

Adversaries continually evolve their TTPs, as seen in the 2023 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations, where several vendors failed to detect novel lateral movement techniques not included in prior threat models. While tools missed emerging techniques in controlled evaluations, red teams in the wild can pivot on the fly. Skilled red teams, like real-world adversaries, think outside the box. 

In one engagement, testers exploited a help desk script that revealed password reset links in logs—something an automated scanner would never think to check.

Automated tools simply can’t replicate this adaptability. They check for known vulnerabilities but miss subtle misconfigurations, new attack techniques, and custom application logic flaws. For example, broken object-level authorization (BOLA)—a top cause of API breaches—is frequently overlooked by automation, as highlighted in the OWASP API Top 10.

That’s why organizations that rely solely on automated testing are in for a rude awakening. Uber’s 2022 breach, for instance, involved social engineering and lateral movement—tactics no BAS tool could simulate or detect.

Organizations may feel secure when tools report no critical findings—only to discover that an attacker slipped in by exploiting an overlooked API quirk, phishing email, or misused privilege.

BAS Is Only as Good as the Team Interpreting the Results. Garbage In, Garbage Out

BAS doesn’t magically detect vulnerabilities—it reflects the quality of the input and the expertise interpreting the output. A skilled team can tailor scenarios to mirror real attacker behavior, ensuring tests are relevant and comprehensive. An unskilled team, however, may rely on default configurations that simulate outdated or irrelevant attacks.

For example, if a BAS tool is configured without understanding the organization's cloud infrastructure, it might run tests focused on legacy systems—missing cloud-specific threats like misconfigured IAM policies or exposed storage buckets.

This isn’t just a theoretical risk. A 2024 SANS survey found that over 60% of security teams lack the in-house expertise to interpret BAS results or customize test cases—leaving them vulnerable to blind spots and false confidence.

Compliance reports depend on accurately scoped and executed simulations. If a BAS tool isn’t mapped to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK or fails to test controls required by PCI-DSS—such as logging, anomaly detection, or exfiltration safeguards—the organization may unknowingly report compliance while critical controls go untested, creating a false sense of security.

BAS also generates raw data that must be properly analyzed. Inexperienced teams may ignore real vulnerabilities, chase false positives, and fail to prioritize fixes effectively. The result? Teams waste valuable resources chasing noise, while real threats slip through undetected—eroding both security posture and ROI on the BAS investment. 

Used effectively, BAS can be a game-changer. But without skilled interpretation, it becomes just another checkbox—costly, noisy, and dangerously misleading.

The Solution: Combining BAS, RedOps, and Attack Surface Monitoring

Under Invinsense OXDR—We’ve Combined BAS Simulations With Redops, Attack Surface Monitoring and Vulnerability Management to Effectively Identify Exposures and Vulnerabilities Within Your Organization

Step 1: Map Your Full Attack Surface with an Attacker's Lens

Before running a BAS simulation, we will first map out your organization’s full attack surface through Invinsense OXDR’s Attackers Lens View and Vulnerability Management. This will cover the data on the surface as well as on the dark web. It will also include the networks, applications, and devices that your business uses to carry out its daily work. 

Here is an example of how your entire attack surface will look like. Take this as a scenario to understand the approach of Invinsense OXDR. 

Attack Surface Mapping – Potential Entry Points for Adversaries

Step 2: Simulate Real-World Threats Across Every Vector

With your organization’s entire attack surface mapped—Invinsense OXDR will perform different simulations through a combination of BAS and RedOps. 

Dark Web Exposures 

To identify your organization's exposures on the dark web, BAS will simulate credential stuffing across public login portals to identify where leaked credentials may still be valid. Meanwhile, the RedOps team will conduct phishing & vishing campaigns to identify employees that are susceptible to social engineering. BAS + RedOps combined will test brand impersonation risks by simulating spoofed email domains and malicious communication attempts to evaluate email filtering and user awareness. 

Surface Web Exposures 

BAS will perform automated scans to identify misconfigurations, open login pages, and hidden panels. It then attempts an unauthenticated access to simulate unauthorized entry. Meanwhile, the RedOps team targets deeper risks, such as leveraging leaked credentials or tokens to gain access to cloud environments and CI/CD pipelines. They may also simulate web shell injection to emulate site defacement or lateral movement within the web application infrastructure. 

Network Infrastructure 

BAS will simulate brute-force login attempts, often using tools like Metasploit modules, to test the resilience of authentication mechanisms. The RedOps team focuses on more advanced techniques, such as exploiting known CVEs to attempt post-authentication remote code execution (RCE). They also probe for egress bypass opportunities, and simulate C2 (Command  & Control) traffic to evaluate detection and response capabilities. 

Applications 

Many organizations often use cloud-based tools that are outdated. These outdated versions have vulnerabilities that an adversary can exploit. Invinsense OXDR’s BAS will simulate CVE-based injection attacks, like sending specially crafted inputs to exploit known vulnerabilities. Through these simulations—organizations will get insights into how adversaries may escalate permissions or gain access to internal data and admin panels. 

Furthermore, Open APIs are publicly exposed and lack proper authentication. A combined simulation from BAS + RedOps, where BAS will test unauthenticated access by checking if data can be retrieved without login. It will also simulate fuzzing, in which BAS will send random malformed inputs to discover weaknesses by causing crashes, and gaining unauthorized access. 

Lastly, in many organizations, employees are often using tools and applications that have not been approved or monitored by IT and the Security Teams. The RedOps team will discover these through reconnaissance by scanning subdomains, DNS, and SaaS activity. They will then attempt to compromise these applications by using default credentials and exploiting known bugs. Once they are inside, the Red Team will simulate insider pivoting by pretending they are an insider and move laterally from the shadow application into core systems to exfiltrate files, and escalate their access. 

Devices 

BAS will deploy harmless malware payloads to the laptops that employees use for their day-to-day work. This will test if the EDR that your organization has employed can detect and block threats or not. Furthermore, the Red Team will emulate Mirai botnet-like behavior by scanning for open ports and default credentials and trying to hijack them. This will reveal whether the IoT devices that your organization uses are overlooked or not secure.

Lastly, the Red Team will also simulate DNS poisoning, VPN hijacking, and intercept unencrypted traffic since home routers often run outdated firmware and weak configurations. ‍

Step 3: Prioritize What Matters with Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

Gartner in 2022 came up with CTEM, which stands for continuous threat exposure management. It’s a cybersecurity framework that advocates that instead of trying to remediate all exposures at the same time, organizations should focus on prioritizing the ones that are highly exploitable and frequently targeted by adversaries.

Invinsense OXDR follows the CTEM approach. It will present your organization with a list of exposures and vulnerabilities that have a higher chance of being exploited by the adversaries. This will help you prioritize your business resources in remediating those exposures and vulnerabilities that pose the highest threat.

Post-Simulation Prioritized Findings

CTEM is a cyclical process and should be performed continuously. This will strengthen your organization’s security posture in the long run. The remediation of the above exposures and vulnerabilities will be handled by our Purple and Security Engineering Team.

Conclusion: Test Like It’s Real—Because the Attacker Is

Breach and Attack Simulation holds immense promise—but only when wielded with precision, context, and up-to-date intelligence. The moment organizations treat BAS as a checkbox exercise or rely blindly on automation, they open the door to blind spots that adversaries are quick to exploit.

From overlooking unknown assets to running outdated attack chains, the most common failures in BAS are entirely preventable. But prevention demands more than tools—it requires informed execution, continuous threat alignment, and skilled interpretation.

Security isn’t about passing simulations. It’s about preparing for adversaries who don’t follow scripts. Don’t let your simulations lull you into a false sense of security. Test like it’s real—because for the attacker, it always is.