What is the primary goal of an adversary trying to communicate with compromised systems?

The primary goal of an adversary attempting to communicate with compromised systems typically revolves around establishing and maintaining control over those systems. This control allows the adversary to execute commands, deploy additional malware, exfiltrate data, and orchestrate further attacks as needed. By gaining control of the compromised systems, the adversary can manipulate the environment to their advantage, leveraging the resources of the systems for their objectives, such as launching further attacks or maintaining persistence in the network.

Communication with these compromised systems is essential for executing such strategies, as it enables the adversary to send commands and gather information about the system's status or the network it resides in. While data retrieval, surveillance, and system repair might be involved in specific contexts, they are generally secondary to the fundamental objective of asserting control over the system.