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Adversaries who successfully compromise a system may attempt to maintain persistence by “closing the door” behind them – in other words, by preventing other threat actors from initially accessing or maintaining a foothold on the same system. For example, adversaries may patch a vulnerable, compromised system(Citation: Mandiant-iab-control)(Citation: CERT AT Fortinent Ransomware 2025) to prevent other threat actors from leveraging that vulnerability in the future. They may “close the door” in other ways, such as disabling vulnerable services(Citation: sophos-multiple-attackers), stripping privileges from accounts(Citation: aquasec-postgres-processes), or removing other malware already on the compromised device.(Citation: fsecure-netsky) Hindering other threat actors may allow an adversary to maintain sole access to a compromised system or network. This prevents the threat actor from needing to compete with or even being removed themselves by other threat actors. It also reduces the
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