Attack Path Analysis

Overview

Attack Path Analysis connects individual findings, identities, and resources into the chains an attacker could actually follow. Instead of a flat list of issues, you see how an adversary moves from an initial foothold toward a high-value target — and which single fix breaks the most chains.

Key benefits

Benefit	Capability	Business value
Real context	Graph-based path discovery	Fix exploitable chains, not isolated alerts
Sharp priorities	Feasibility and business-risk scoring	Effort goes to the paths that matter
Choke points	Identifies steps shared by many paths	One fix can break many attacks

How it works

The graph model

RedCloud builds a graph of resources and identities and finds the routes between them, including a knowledge graph used for shortest-path reasoning. Each route is broken into discrete steps, mapped to MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques (see MITRE ATT&CK).

Privilege escalation & lateral movement

The engine models privilege-escalation steps and lateral movement across identities and services — for example, a service account that can be impersonated, then used to grant itself more access.

Toxic combinations

Some risks only emerge when several conditions line up (for example, a public resource plus an over-privileged identity plus a missing control). RedCloud detects these toxic combinations even when each individual finding looks benign.

Scoring

Each path receives a score that reflects feasibility (how reachable and exploitable the steps are) and business risk (the value of what’s at the end). A realism scorer and blast-radius analysis sharpen the ranking so the most dangerous, most achievable paths surface first.

Implementation / workflow

1. Run a scan (a full profile gives the richest graph).
2. Open Attack Analysis → Attack Paths (or Top Paths for the highest-scoring ones).
3. Expand a path to see its steps, kill-chain stages, and MITRE mapping.
4. Use the Path Narrative for a plain-language summary.
5. Fix the shared choke-point steps first, then revalidate.

Best practices

• Prioritize steps that appear in many paths — they’re the highest-leverage fixes.
• Pair path analysis with Blast Radius to understand worst-case impact.
• Re-run after remediation to confirm the chain is broken.

Related articles

• Attack Graph
• MITRE ATT&CK
• Blast Radius

Key Takeaway

Attack paths turn a list of findings into a map of real attacks. Fix the shared choke points and you break many chains at once.