Causal attack-path analysis

An attack path is a hypothesis about compatible security primitives, not a list of technique names. Each link needs an input/precondition, resulting capability, identity, target, state and evidence. A prior primitive must actually supply what the next consumes in the same relevant environment. Different tenants, expired tokens, incompatible privileges or unproven reachability can break an apparent chain.

Evidence and counterexamples

Mark links observed, independently reproduced, inferred or contradicted. Keep the supporting artifact and a competing benign explanation. Scanner hits, topology edges, apparent secrets and service versions are leads rather than proven transitions. An observed access boundary does not establish a bypass. A plausible destructive tail may explain risk but cannot be reported as executed or increase confirmed impact without sufficient supporting evidence. Path reasoning does not authorize new target interactions.

Comparative analysis

Compare candidate explanations by prerequisite confidence, information gained by a bounded test, expected impact, uncertainty, operational cost and permitted noise. Do not assign a universal order such as credentials before misconfiguration, or assume every mission targets Domain Admin/crown jewels. The task's actual success criterion determines relevance. Numeric probabilities without data are assumptions, not measurements. Detection and execution failure need attributed evidence; a blocked request does not by itself prove either target safety or a need for evasion.

Defensive interpretation

Identify the controls that interrupt each demonstrated link. Distinguish a missing control from unavailable telemetry; MTTD needs correlated timestamps on a common clock. A remediation recommendation should name the failed boundary and an observable retest condition. The selected workflow owns which objectives to execute, allowed expansion, verification ownership and final synthesis.