Commonly Abused Administrative Utilities: A Hidden Risk to Enterprise Security 

This article describes how trusted, built-in Windows administrative utilities are frequently weaponized by attackers to perform reconnaissance, lateral movement, persistence, and command-and-control operations. It catalogs commonly abused tools (PowerShell, WMI, RDP, mshta.exe, regsvr32.exe, cscript/wscript, msbuild, installutil, etc.), explains typical abuse scenarios, and recommends mitigations such as restricting access (AppLocker/WDAC/Group Policy), using host-based firewalls and network restrictions, and implementing robust logging and SIEM-based detection (PowerShell ScriptBlock, Module, and Transcription logging).