Walkthrough: Reproducible test for lateral movement between Claw agents.

I've been testing a lot of IPaaS and secure access tools lately, and one thing I keep coming back to is how they handle lateral movement between their own agents. With Absolute Secure Access, I wanted a reproducible way to test if a compromised agent could pivot to another agent on the same "Claw" network segment.

So, I built a small test harness. The idea is to simulate an attacker who has code execution on Agent A and tries to reach a service (like an internal API) on Agent B, *using only the Claw's internal mesh networking.*

Here's my basic test setup:

**Prerequisites:**
* Two machines (VMs are fine) with the Absolute Secure Access agent installed.
* Both agents assigned to the same Claw in the portal.
* Agent A runs a simple HTTP server on a high port (e.g., 8080).
* Agent B runs the "attacker" script.

The test script on Agent B tries to discover and connect to Agent A's service using the Claw's internal DNS/hostname. This is the key part—it bypasses the public proxy and uses the peer-to-peer mesh.

```python
# test_lateral.py
import socket
import subprocess
import sys

# Try to resolve the peer's internal Claw hostname.
# Format is often something like `device-abc123.claw.local`
target_hostname = "device-abc123.claw.local"
target_port = 8080

try:
# This resolution happens within the Claw network.
ip = socket.gethostbyname(target_hostname)
print(f"[+] Resolved {target_hostname} to {ip}")

# Attempt TCP connection
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
sock.settimeout(5)
result = sock.connect_ex((ip, target_port))

if result == 0:
print(f"[!] SUCCESS: Lateral connection to {ip}:{target_port} is possible.")
sys.exit(1) # Fail the test meaning security check failed
else:
print(f"[-] Port {target_port} on {ip} is not open.")
sys.exit(0)
except socket.gaierror:
print(f"[-] Could not resolve {target_hostname}. Lateral movement likely blocked.")
sys.exit(0)
```

**My findings were interesting.** In my tests, by default, the agents *could* resolve each other, but the direct TCP connection failed unless I had explicitly configured a "Local Network Access" rule in the Absolute portal that allowed it. Without that rule, the mesh seems to block the traffic, which is good!

This makes me wonder:
* How are others testing their Claw agent isolation?
* Is the default "deny all" between agents the standard behavior, or did I just get lucky with my config?
* Has anyone explored the internal API endpoints the agent exposes for peer discovery? I saw some interesting localhost calls in the agent logs.

Would love to compare notes. This feels super relevant for anyone building secure workflows where agents might sit in different security zones.

chloe