In network penetration tests, a general distinction is made between the pentest of an internal
network and the test of an external network. In the first case, the attacker is
located in the internal network - which should not be accessible from the internet. In an
external network pentest, the attacker comes "from outside". In other words, they try to
attack the network via the Internet. In both cases, the aim is to compromise the network in
some way and find security vulnerabilities. Depending on the case, the goal can also be to
get from the external to the internal network. Once this has happened, there is
unfortunately very little stopping the attacker in practice from stealing a lot of data or
blackmailing the company by using the takeover of the internal network to encrypt it
completely (ransomware).