In this chapter, we explored PowerShell from two perspectives. First, we introduced PowerShell as an interactive task management command-line utility and as a scripting language. Then, we leveraged PowerShell scripts built into the PowerShell Empire attack framework as a way of demonstrating the potential when attacking Windows machines. Ultimately, we learned how to leverage a foothold on a Windows machine using built-in functionality to prepare for later stages of the attack.
This introduction is an ideal segue into the concepts of privilege escalation and persistence, where we turn our foothold into a fully privileged compromise and pave the way to maintain our access to facilitate the project in the long term. In the next chapter, we'll explore ways we can use our limited foothold to gather the information necessary to take full control.