From Phishing to Exfiltration: How Modern Attacks Happen in Less Than 24 Hours

The clock starts ticking the moment someone in your company clicks that email. In today’s cyber threat landscape, the timeline from initial compromise to full data exfiltration isn’t weeks, days, or even hours. It’s minutes. And most businesses don’t realize they’re being hit until it’s far too late.

This isn’t the Hollywood-style hacking you see in movies with green code flying across the screen and some hoodie-wearing genius breaking in over hours of trial and error. Real-world cyberattacks in 2025 are fast, automated, and devastatingly efficient. The attackers have already streamlined the kill chain. They’ve built malware that executes with precision. They’ve crafted phishing lures that mimic your CEO’s writing style down to the punctuation. And once they’re in, they waste no time.

If your business is still thinking, “We’ll respond when we detect something,” you’re already operating behind the curve. Modern threat actors are not waiting for you to catch up. They’re in and out, with your data, your access, and your credibility, before your security tools even sound the alarm.

This is how it happens. And this is why Lockstock builds defenses that operate on attacker speed, not boardroom speed.

Step One: The Click

The modern attack often begins with a single click. Maybe it’s an email from what looks like your CFO asking for invoice approval. Maybe it’s a Microsoft 365 login screen that looks perfectly legitimate. Maybe it’s a resume attachment sent to your HR inbox.

Phishing isn’t a nuisance anymore. It’s the preferred gateway because it preys on your weakest link: human behavior. And with generative AI now being used to craft more convincing messages, even savvy employees are falling for attacks they would have spotted last year.

Once the link is clicked or the attachment is opened, the attacker has their foothold. And that’s when the real work begins.

Step Two: Establishing Persistence

Immediately after the click, malware begins executing, often silently. It doesn’t crash systems. It doesn’t display warning popups. It injects itself into trusted processes. It disables logging. It installs backdoors. It begins collecting information about the environment: user privileges, file structure, network layout, endpoint defenses, and open ports.

This step usually takes minutes, not hours. Once the attacker knows their location and the extent of their access, they escalate quickly.

Too many businesses assume a breach would “look obvious.” It won’t. Most of the time, it looks like normal behavior. The attacker’s software is impersonating real users, blending in with real traffic, and triggering nothing that would seem out of place to untrained eyes.

This is why Lockstock deploys advanced endpoint detection and response (EDR) platforms that monitor behavior, not just signatures. Because modern malware doesn’t look like a virus, it looks like you.

Step Three: Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement

With a beachhead established, the attacker begins moving. They seek out admin credentials, cached passwords, and misconfigured services. They use pass-the-hash attacks or token impersonation to escalate privileges. Once they have domain admin-level access, the entire network is exposed.

They move laterally, hopping from system to system, probing for valuable assets like file shares, databases, email accounts, and backup systems. They cover their tracks as they go. In many cases, they’ll even create new users within Active Directory to ensure they retain access even if the original compromise is detected.

This stage is where most businesses still have a chance to stop the breach — if they have the right tools, and if they’re watching. But most SMBs don’t have real-time visibility into what’s happening inside their environment. They assume antivirus or firewalls are watching their backs. They’re not.

Lockstock deploys 24/7 threat monitoring and live analyst support to catch this movement as it happens. Not in a weekly report. Not after a scan. Right now.

Step Four: Data Discovery and Exfiltration

Once the attacker has access and control, the final phase begins: data theft. They know what they want. Customer data. Intellectual property. Financial records. HR files. Email archives. They compress it, encrypt it, and send it off to remote servers in chunks designed to evade detection. Sometimes the data goes to public cloud storage accounts. Sometimes it’s exfiltrated using encrypted DNS tunneling. Either way, it’s leaving your network, and you probably won’t know until a ransom note shows up.

In many ransomware cases, this exfiltration happens before the encryption. The attacker doesn’t just want your files — they want leverage. They want to threaten public exposure, regulatory fines, and brand damage. And in 2025, that threat is more powerful than the ransom itself.

This is why Lockstock builds data loss prevention (DLP) and cloud access security controls into our defense stack. Because when data starts moving where it shouldn’t, you need to know, and act fast.

Step Five: The Drop

With the data in hand and backdoors installed, attackers may either trigger ransomware encryption, contact the victim with demands, or simply disappear — only to return weeks later when your guard is down.

By the time most businesses realize what’s happened, the data is long gone. The investigation begins. Systems go offline. Legal teams are called. Insurance companies get involved. And costs start stacking up: downtime, recovery, reputation loss, and customer churn.

All of this, from the first email click to full exfiltration, often happens in under 24 hours. Let that sink in.

The Lockstock Difference: Offense-Informed Defense

Modern threats don’t wait for you to get ready. They don’t give you time to react. And they definitely don’t care if your MSP promised “24/7 monitoring” but outsourced detection to an offshore helpdesk reading scripts.

That’s why Lockstock takes an offense-informed approach to defense. We operate like attackers, so we know how they move. We study threat actor tactics. We simulate attacks in real environments. And we build security operations that stop movement, shut down privilege abuse, detect early-stage persistence, and prevent data from walking out the door.

We don’t do canned solutions. We build real-time protection, backed by real experts, tuned to real threats.

Time Is the New Battleground

If there’s one thing every business needs to understand about cybersecurity in 2025, it’s this: speed is everything. The difference between containment and catastrophe is measured in minutes. If your current security strategy can’t respond within that window, you’re simply not protected.

Attackers are moving faster. Are you?

If you’re relying on legacy tools, outdated assumptions, or slow-moving MSPs to protect your business, it’s time to make a change. Lockstock was built to operate at threat speed — and we’re here to help you get ahead of the next attack.

Don’t wait for the ransom note. Find out how fast your defenses really are with a free threat simulation from Lockstock. Let’s see if your business can stand up to a 24-hour breach, or if it falls before lunch.