A global technology company with over 10,000 employees engaged Chaleit to conduct an advanced red team assessment of its security infrastructure.
What began as a traditional security evaluation evolved into a comprehensive discovery of systemic vulnerabilities that transformed their approach to security controls.
The challenge
Despite substantial investments in security infrastructure and maintaining an internal red team, the company needed external validation of their security posture.
Notably, the engagement specifically excluded phishing and social engineering — a deliberate choice to focus on technical infrastructure security.
The key issues were:
- Extensive technical infrastructure making critical assets difficult to identify
- Complex API ecosystem requiring thorough evaluation
- Need to validate the effectiveness of existing security controls
- The challenge of protecting intellectual property across thousands of applications
"With such a vast infrastructure, identifying truly critical vulnerabilities required looking beyond obvious targets," noted a Chaleit expert, highlighting the complexity of the engagement.
The solution
Chaleit implemented a systematic approach to security testing that went beyond traditional methodologies. The team really thought it through and the red teaming exercise was implemented in two phases:
Phase 1: Discovery and analysis
- Conducted extensive reconnaissance of public-facing assets
- Analysed API implementations and developer environments
- Identified critical information exposure points
- Mapped potential attack paths through the infrastructure
Phase 2: Technical execution
- Discovered exposed credentials in development platforms
- Identified MFA implementation weaknesses
- Gained access to internal knowledge base systems
- Achieved persistent access through sophisticated techniques
The Chaleit team maintained access for eight days without detection, demonstrating the need for enhanced monitoring and response capabilities.
At the organisation's request, we also validated their data loss prevention controls by exporting approximately 10GB of data — all with explicit client approval and oversight.
The outcome and aftermath
The engagement revealed significant findings across the organisation:
Security gaps
- Identified critical MFA implementation flaws across enterprise applications
- Discovered weaknesses in session management
- Demonstrated major gaps in data loss prevention
- Exposed systemic monitoring and detection shortcomings
Organisational impact
- Provided a comprehensive view of external attack surface
- Revealed differences between known and actual asset inventory
- Demonstrated the impact of seemingly minor misconfigurations
- Validated the importance of external security perspective
- Briefed a concerned group of execs who went on to own the outcomes
What made this engagement particularly valuable was the interactive nature of the testing. Rather than following a rigid scope, we adapted our approach based on live findings and client feedback. This flexibility enabled us to validate multiple security controls and provide immediate, actionable insights.
Key takeaways
- A single misconfiguration can compromise even well-protected environments.
- Traditional vulnerability scanning misses sophisticated attack vectors.
- External perspective complements internal security capabilities.
- Security control effectiveness requires continuous validation.
- Process and people issues often outweigh technical vulnerabilities.
- Interactive partnerships yield richer results than rigid engagements — the ability to investigate emerging concerns and validate additional controls in real time multiplied the value of the assessment.
The engagement demonstrated how red team exercises can uncover critical security gaps even in sophisticated environments.
As a result, the client expanded the engagement to include a comprehensive validation of their MFA implementation across thousands of applications, demonstrating how deep security testing leads to broader security improvements.
