BSides Knoxville 2026

Initial access is often portrayed as complex exploitation and zero-day vulnerabilities, but in the real world attackers usually gain entry through much simpler methods such as social engineering, credential harvesting, and the abuse of common misconfigurations.

This talk walks through real world techniques used during red team engagements to gain initial access to enterprise environments. We will explore social engineering attacks, physical access scenarios, external attack surface opportunities, and internal network techniques used to establish an initial foothold.

This is not a talk about hypothetical attacks or theoretical vulnerabilities. It focuses on the techniques that consistently work during real world red team engagements and what defenders can do to better detect and prevent them.