How to Shut Down a Cyberattack: Leveraging the Unified Kill Chain with Aviatrix

June 4, 2025 in cloud security, cloud network security By Benson George

More than 3 in 5 attacker movements in cloud environments involve lateral movement attempts, according to Google Cloud’s Threat Horizons Report.

Attackers don’t think in silos — and neither should your defenses.

Today’s threats don’t stop at the perimeter. They infiltrate, escalate, and move laterally across the cloud, exploiting weak paths between workloads, regions, and accounts. If you only protect the front door, you’re ignoring every hallway inside.

That’s why Aviatrix secures the network from the inside out, following the attacker’s playbook step-by-step and shutting down movement at every stage of the Unified Kill Chain (UKC).

What is the Unified Kill Chain?

The Unified Kill Chain, developed by Paul Pols, expands on traditional frameworks like Lockheed Martin’s Cyber Kill Chain and MITRE ATT&CK. It better reflects modern adversary behavior, especially in multicloud and hybrid environments.

By breaking down the process of a cyberattack into In, Through, and Out, the UKC helps organizations increase their cyber resilience by stopping hacking attempts at multiple stages of an attack.

Unified Kill Chain image - developed by Paul Pols

Unified Kill Chain — developed by Paul Pols

The UKC models how attackers infiltrate a network:

Exploit misconfigurations and credentials
Establish outbound command-and-control
Move laterally between cloud assets
Exfiltrate data over encrypted channels
Persist using stealthy, cloud-native techniques

It provides a structure that networking and security teams can use to build layered defenses that reduce dwell time, blast radius, and breach impact.

Understanding the UKC in a Cloud Context

Think of the kill chain like a network of doors inside your enterprise: not just the front entrance, but the internal rooms attackers quietly move through.

In the cloud, that progression often looks like:

Reconnaissance – Scanning public IPs, ports, metadata
Exploitation – Gaining access via credentials, misconfigurations, or zero-days
Command & Control (C2) – Establishing outbound communication via DNS or HTTPS
Lateral Movement – Traversing VPCs, regions, or clouds to escalate
Exfiltration – Stealing sensitive data through encrypted tunnels
Persistence – Maintaining long-term access using misused credentials, cloud-native services, or hidden connectivity paths

Each step is a pressure point. Each one also gives you a chance to break the chain if your defenses are built in the right place.

Aviatrix: Embedded Defense, Not Bolted-On

Legacy tools try to bolt security onto the edge of the cloud. Aviatrix builds it into the network fabric itself, giving you distributed enforcement, dynamic policy, and visibility across cloud and hybrid paths.

Here’s how Aviatrix maps to Unified Kill Chain concepts to protect networks:

UKC Stage	Aviatrix Capabilities	Security Outcomes	Business Outcomes
Reconnaissance	FlowIQ traffic analytics to detect internal or external scan behavior Segmentation to reduce unnecessary exposure	Identifies early-stage recon attempts; blocks attacker visibility into cloud resources	Shrinks attack surface and improves audit readiness
Exploitation	Microsegmentation by tag, app, or role FlowIQ anomaly detection for east-west access patterns	Limits attacker movement post-initial access; detects unusual communication paths	Reduces risk of breach escalation and minimizes attacker dwell time
Command & Control	Egress control (default deny, DNS/FQDN filtering) Encrypted north-south flows for all cloud exits	Disrupts outbound connections to malicious domains; prevents use of DNS/HTTPS-based C2 channels	Prevents data theft and command signal transmission; enables regulatory compliance
Lateral Movement	SmartGroup-driven segmentation between workloads, regions, and clouds Encrypted east-west transit	Blocks unauthorized lateral access paths; stops attacker pivoting between cloud environments	Contains blast radius and reduces breach impact on critical applications
Exfiltration	Policy-based egress enforcement High-performance encryption over hybrid and cloud-native paths	Prevents unauthorized data exfiltration; enforces encryption standards across cloud and hybrid paths	Stops regulatory data loss and reduces legal, financial, and brand exposure risks
Persistence	FlowIQ traffic analytics to uncover long-lived or stealthy access patterns SmartGroup and Terraform-based enforcement automation CoPilot-driven route and topology visibility to identify unauthorized connectivity paths	Detects indicators of long-term persistence; maintains enforcement consistency over time and at scale	Ensures sustained zero trust posture; limits time-to-remediate and supports operational resilience

Real-World Attacks Where Aviatrix Would Have Broken the Kill Chain

These weren’t zero-day-only events. They succeeded because the network didn’t enforce zero trust.

Attack / Group	UKC Stages Impacted	What Native Tools Missed	Aviatrix Defenses Applied	When Blocked…
MOVEit / Clop	Recon → Exploit → Exfiltration	No outbound domain/IP filtering	Egress, Encryption, Visibility	Prevented regulated data loss
Medusa Ransomware	Exploit → C2 → Lateral → Exfiltration	DNS-based C2 allowed; east-west unsegmented	Segmentation, ️ Egress, Encryption	Contained ransomware, avoided downtime
SolarWinds / UNC2452	Recon → Exploit → C2 → Lateral	DNS/TLS traffic not inspected; no segmentation	Segmentation, Egress, DNS FlowIQ	Stopped privilege escalation, lateral movement
APT28 (Fancy Bear)	Recon → Exploit → C2 → Exfiltration	No egress filtering; encrypted C2 allowed	Egress, Encryption, Flow Analytics	Blocked espionage via cloud-native paths
APT41 (Double Dragon)	Exploit → C2 → Lateral → Exfiltration	Flat networks; no microsegmentation	Segmentation, Egress, Encryption	Isolated cloud workloads from adversary spread
WannaCry	Exploit → Lateral Movement	Flat networks enabled worm propagation	Segmentation, Encryption	Prevented lateral ransomware blast radius
Volt Typhoon	Recon → Exploit → C2 → Persistence	No TLS/DNS inspection; no anomaly detection	DNS Egress Control, FlowIQ, Segmentation	Disrupted stealthy APT persistence

The Breach Is the Result, not the Beginning

Breaches happen when detection comes too late and enforcement comes too shallow.

Most native tools log symptoms after the fact. Aviatrix builds policy into the network itself by stopping traffic where it shouldn’t exist, segmenting what shouldn’t connect, and encrypting what attackers want to steal.

Distributed Firewall — Policy enforcement across clouds, regions, and workloads
DNS, FQDN Egress Filtering — Stops C2 and data exfiltration early
FlowIQ Traffic Analytics — Uncovers attacker movement and policy violations
Terraform & SmartGroups — Enforce policy-as-code and scale securely with app growth
High-Performance Encryption — Secure hybrid paths up to 100 Gbps

Aviatrix offers both visibility and active defense across every route.

The Takeaway

Attackers don’t break in. They log in, blend in, and move in silence.

Aviatrix breaks the chain by embedding network policy exactly where attackers operate:

Blocks C2 and data theft with policy-based egress
Encrypts routes across clouds, apps, and sites
Segments environments dynamically by tag, not IP
Detects attacker movement across east-west flows

Using these embedded network policies and visibility, Aviatrix helps limit breaches, streamline audits, and decrease operational drag.

When security is built into the network, the attacker’s plan fails before it starts.

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