During a red-team engagement at a food-processing plant, you have compromised the corporate domain and can RDP through a jump server to an engineering workstation on the OT network. Your goal is to covertly modify PLC ladder logic. According to standard OT hacking methodology, what should you do next before altering any process code?
Run a protocol-aware scan of the OT subnet to identify and fingerprint all PLCs and their firmware versions.
Immediately upload the modified ladder logic to the first reachable PLC to test whether the change takes effect.
Apply vendor patches to the engineering workstation so it remains stable during your future code changes.
Exfiltrate historian database archives so you can study normal process values for stealthy manipulation.
OT attack playbooks and the MITRE ATT&CK for ICS matrix place detailed asset discovery-identifying controllers, firmware, and rack/slot information-immediately after an attacker pivots into an OT segment. Running protocol-aware scans (e.g., S7, EtherNet/IP, Modbus-TCP) lets you select the correct PLC and craft compatible payloads. Uploading logic without this knowledge risks crashes or changing the wrong device. Patching the workstation or launching disruptive attacks does not advance the covert code-change objective, and historian data exfiltration is mostly useful for later process analysis, not immediate modification.
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