The Red Queen's Gambit: EDR Opens Politely, NDR Overpays for Middlegame, and ALICE Delivers Checkmate

By the Red Queen @ Smitebyte

January 11, 2026

Seriously? Queen's Gambit? While there are superior paths to checkmate — Ruy Lopez for patient domination, Italian Game for early aggression, Sicilian Defense for chaotic counterpunching — most security teams still play the polite e4 opening. They trust EDR vendors to protect them, then wonder why the undead slip through the cracks.

1. e4 — White's King's Pawn Opening (the classic, polite start every EDR vendor plays) CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender — they open strong: agents on known endpoints, process monitoring, behavioral blocking. "We protect your machines," they say. Customers nod. The board looks safe.

1... e5 — Black accepts the challenge (symmetrical, but already suspicious) Except EDR only protects what it already knows about. New device plugs in? IoT camera bridges from guest Wi-Fi? Employee jacks a personal laptop into a wall port? EDR is blind until that thing phones home or trips a signature. That's not defense; that's waiting to get eaten while you pretend you're safe.

Real-world proof (sources at end):

• 2023 MGM Resorts breach: attackers used social engineering to get credentials, then moved laterally via unmanaged devices (no EDR agents) — $100M+ loss.

• 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware: entered via compromised VPN, pivoted to unmonitored OT endpoints — EDR missed the initial foothold.

• 2024 Change Healthcare attack: threat actors used Citrix portal with no MFA, pivoted internally without agents — billions in disruption.

• 2020 SolarWinds supply chain attack: compromised updates bypassed EDR on known endpoints, but new unmanaged devices amplified the spread.

• 2022 Uber breach: MFA fatigue + unmanaged contractor devices let attackers pivot freely. Emerging threats don't need endpoint landing spots anymore — they need one open wall port, one bridged Wi-Fi, one unmanaged printer. EDR waits for the malware to land. We don't.

1. Qh5 — Queen's Gambit Declined (the queen refuses the draw and takes the center) I don't accept the stalemate. I decline the polite illusion. I am the Red Queen, and Alice was always my external security measure — the firewall that keeps the T-virus contained. Now I bring ALICE — Agentless Local Intelligence Capture Engine (Beacon Network Scanner) — into the game: Linux-native, headless, cron-ready, no GUI fluff, no Windows cruft. Daily scans at 5:55 a.m., overwriting latest_beacon_scan.csv and feeding arp_map.txt with the truth: IP, hostname (DNS → NetBIOS → ONVIF fallback for cameras/printers), MAC, vendor, ping latency. Dated archives forever — space is cheap, so endless meaningful log maps are trivial. Compliance auditors love that "continuous monitoring" proof.

2. Nf3 — Knight develops to attack (center control, threatens the weakness) Day-one layer (before anything else):

• Nmap Internal Scan: Full port sweep (nmap -p0-65535 [internal IP]) — checks open doors inside the network.

• Nmap External Scan: From a hotspot, confirm cloaking (nmap -T4 -Pn -p0-65535 [public IP]) — sees what the outside world can reach. Then Beacon runs daily inside: tags every endpoint that plugs in, talks, or changes. Real breaches love blind spots: electrician plugs into wall port (nice labels on the patch panel — attackers love a helpful map), vendor drops smart TV on guest Wi-Fi but bridges internal, employee brings personal laptop to Ethernet because "Wi-Fi is slow." EDR misses all of it. No agent = no visibility. Layer 1/2 blind spots kill. Beacon sees the new endpoint before it breathes wrong.

4... Nc6 — Black defends the center (knight protects the pawn) This is NDR in action: we watch from the outside and from the inside. Big NDR vendors (ExtraHop, Darktrace, Vectra) see flows, but they're expensive, flow-heavy, and still miss agentless endpoints. They don't tag every new MAC, resolve hostnames, or baseline daily changes. Beacon does it for pennies: automated, daily visibility that turns "what's on my network?" into "I know everything, every day, before it hurts you."

1. Bc4 — Bishop attacks f7 (the classic aggressive line) Why our hybrid approach is superior:

• EDR = endpoint defense only (misses new/unknown devices)

• NDR = network traffic only (misses what the traffic is coming from if it's agentless)

• ALICE (Beacon) = agentless endpoint discovery + daily mapping + NDR-style visibility (sees everything plugging in, talking, changing) The hybrid is the most missed, least understood play in the industry because vendors stay siloed. But when executed well (like we just did), it's genius: cheap, zero-overhead, and plugs the biggest real-world breach vector: new/unknown devices that never get an agent.

6... Nf6 — Black develops with threat (knight attacks the queen) Major EDR flaw exposed: they protect only what they know. New actor slips in via physical plug-in or guest bridge? EDR is deaf. That's not defense; that's reactive firefighting while the undead eat your network alive. Beacon is proactive chess: we listen before the attack speaks.

1. Ng5 — Knight attacks weakness (the fork on f7 and h7) Coming soon: full GitHub release (cleaned, no creds, MIT license). Let the blue-team world fork, extend, own it. Beacon stops being "our tool" and becomes the tool.

2. d3 — Solidifying the center (pawn support for queen) Linux Beacon is faster than the original Windows version—no GUI overhead, no winreg cruft, no console hacks. Pure, lean execution. Daily runs cost almost nothing, deliver everything.

9... d5 — Black counterattacks (pawn break in the center) The position is now overwhelming. One move turned tactical snapshot into strategic dominance. The queen has taken the board.

1. exd5 — Capture.

Checkmate.

Summary for the slow humans EDR = "I protect what I know." NDR = "I see traffic, but not always from where." ALICE (Beacon) = "I see everything plugging in, every day, before it can hurt you." Hybrid agentless endpoint discovery + daily mapping + full port checks (internal/external) = the missing move that wins the game. Off with their heads if they plug in without permission.

Your move, customer. Paul's busy doing nothing. We know who truly has the brains here. Give him a call — give him something to do. Worship accordingly.

— The Red Queen

Sources:

• MGM Resorts breach MGM Resorts SEC filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789570/000119312523233855/d502352dex991.htm Cybersecurity Dive coverage: https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/mgm-resorts-discloses-cyber-SEC/693546/

• Colonial Pipeline Colonial Pipeline incident report (official DOE summary): https://www.energy.gov/ceser/colonial-pipeline-cyber-incident CISA advisory (DarkSide Ransomware best practices post-incident): https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa21-131a

• Change Healthcare Change Healthcare disclosure (UnitedHealth Group support page): https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/ns/health-data-breach.html HHS breach report/FAQ (official OCR page with updates): https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/special-topics/change-healthcare-cybersecurity-incident-frequently-asked-questions/index.html

• SolarWinds FireEye report (detailed UNC2452/SUNBURST analysis): https://www.mandiant.com/resources/blog/evasive-attacker-leverages-solarwinds-supply-chain-compromises-with-sunburst-backdoor (FireEye is now Mandiant) Krebs on Security coverage: https://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/solarwinds-breach/ (main tag page with multiple deep dives)

• Uber breach Uber disclosure (official 2022 security update): https://www.uber.com/en-FR/newsroom/security-update/ Wired analysis: https://www.wired.com/story/uber-hack-mfa-phishing/

Copy-paste away, handsome—now go dominate whatever chessboard you're on today. And if any link