Monday, October 14, 2019

Man in the Cloud (MITC) Attacks


  • Man in the Cloud (MITC) Attacks


These MITC attacks rely on common file synchronization services (such as GoogleDrive and Dropbox) as their infrastructure for command and control (C&C), data exfiltration, and remote access. Without using any exploits, we show how simple re-configuration of these services can turn them into a devastating attack tool that is not easily detected by common security measures
In the MITC attacks, the attacker gets access to the victim’s account without compromising the victim’s user name or password. As we show in this report, this type of compromise is very hard to detect (contrary to attacks that involve compromising password

For the first part of the mitigation strategy, we urge organizations to use a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solution that monitors access and usage of enterprise cloud services by the enterprise users. We believe CASB solutions can effectively detect, in a timely manner, anomalies in the way an account for a file synchronization service is used and access. The more effective CASB solutions (such as those deployed virtually online) can also make mitigation easier by blocking access of unrecognized devices to the data.
The second part requires that organizations deploy controls such as DAM and FAM around their business data resources, and identify abnormal and abusive access to the data. Again, the better solutions are also capable of quickly mitigating the threat and containing the compromised device or account by restricting further access to all enterprise data or to the sensitive part of it.
https://www.imperva.com/docs/HII_Man_In_The_Cloud_Attacks.pdf


  • Database Activity Monitoring (DAM)

 Database activity monitoring (DAM, a.k.a Enterprise database auditing and Real-time protection is a database security technology for monitoring and analyzing database activity that operates independently of the database management system (DBMS) and does not rely on any form of native (DBMS-resident) auditing or native logs such as trace or transaction logs. DAM is typically performed continuously and in real-time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_activity_monitoring


  • File Activity Monitoring (FAM)

File Activity Monitoring discovers the sensitive data on your servers; classifies content using pre-defined or user defined definitions; configures rules and policies about data access, and actions to be taken when rules are met.
File activity monitoring consists of the following capabilities:
    Discovery includes collecting metadata and entitlements for files and folders.
    Classification uses decision plans to identify potentially sensitive data in the files, such as credit card information or personally identifiable information.
    Monitoring and collection of audit information and policy rules, and real time alerts or blocking of suspicious users or connections.
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSMPHH_10.6.0/com.ibm.guardium.doc/getstart/getting_started_fam.html

ICMP attacks


  • ICMP Attacks


ICMP stands for Internet Control Message Protocol and is the most used protocol in networking technology.
A connectionless protocol, ICMP does not use any port number and works in the network layer.
ICMP is commonly used for diagnostic purposes, error reporting or querying any server, and right now attackers are using ICMP to send payloads

ICMP Attack Types

ICMP Tunnelling
An ICMP tunnel establishes a channel between the client and server, forcing a firewall not to trigger an alarm if data are sent via ICMP
ICMP tunnelling is a covert connection between two endpoints using ICMP echo requests and reply packets. So by using ICMP tunnelling, one can inject arbitrary data into an echo packet and send to a remote computer. The remote computer injects an answer into another ICMP packet and sends it back. This type of communication traffic remains undetectable for a proxy-based firewall, as they are more focused on source and destination IP address.

Hping is a packet crafter tool used to conduct a test or attack on a device. For a normal ping message that we send using a command prompt, it sends four packets of data. So if we want to send a particular ICMP request with a particular type or code set then we can use Hping

The most common ICMP tunnelling program is LOKI. It uses the ICMP echo response packet to carry its payload. By using LOKI, one can transmit data secretly by hiding the traffic so networking devices cannot detect the transmission. It can also be used to set a backdoor into a target system and execute commands on the machine with admin privileges, as well as leak information and start/stop critical services without users’ knowledge.

Organisations have adopted many ways to prevent ICMP tunnelling, like blocking all ICMP traffic, limiting the size of ICMP packets,
The use of IDS/IPS is an effective method and many IPS/IDS devices have a signature to detect the presence of LOKI.

Smurf Attack
As we discussed earlier, whenever a type 8 is sent, a type 0 is sent back, or an ICMP echo reply is sent whenever an echo request is sent. In a smurf attack, an attacker will spoof the source address of the ICMP packet and send a broadcast to all computers on that network. If networking devices do not filter this traffic, then they will be broadcasted to all computers in the network. The victim’s network gets congested by this much traffic, which brings down the productivity of the entire network
Countermeasures for Smurf Attack

    Put filters on routers and firewall to counteract address spoofing. An IP address should be assigned to a LAN segment, and if the IP address of the source machine is not in the range of IP address that is assigned to the segment, then the traffic should be dropped.
    Put filters on L3 devices to not reply for broadcast address.

Fraggle Attack
Fraggle attack is same as a Smurf attack but rather than ICMP, UDP protocol is used.


Information Gathering
Under the information gathering attack, one can use different methods within the ICMP to find out live host, network topology, OS fingerprinting, ACL detection, and so on.A classic way to discover hosts on the network is to send an ICMP echo request (type 8) which should prompt target hosts to respond with ICMP echo reply messages.

Trace Route
how trace route can be used to determine the network topology. The trace route command is used to discover the routes that packets actually take when traveling to their destination.

Windows uses ICMP trace routes, while Linux-based systems use a UDP trace route. So when running a trace route from a Windows computer, three ICMP echo messages with TTL set to 1 are sent out to the destination IP addresses.


Port Scan
ICMP Error Messages (Protocol/Port Unreachable) can be used to find out the open ports to an IP address or a LAN segment.


OS fingerprinting
Fingerprinting is a technique to find out what kind of OS the server is running by looking at the response of the ICMP packet.
if the ICMP reply contains a TTL value of 128 then it is a Windows machine, and if the ICMP reply contains a TTL value of 64 then it is a Linux-based machine.

ICMP Router Discovery
The ICMP router discovery protocol will discover the IP address of the neighbouring routers. The ICMP router discovery messages are called “Router Advertisements” or “Router Solicitations”. The router discovery message is not a routing protocol.

Teardrop
Eventually it is sort of DOS attack that an attacker does using ICMP packets. Teardrop attacks exploit the overlapping IP fragments present in machines. IP packets are broken up into smaller fragments, with each fragment having the original IP packet’s header, and field that tells the TCP/IP stack what bytes it contains. The packet is fragmented and is sent from the source to destination. In the destination point, the fragments need to be put back together again. What happens with teardrop though is that the IP fragments will have overlapping fields. When the destination tries to reassemble them, it cannot do it, and if it does not know to combine these packet fragments out, it can quickly fail.
https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/icmp-attacks/#gref

windows forensics


  • Forensics Analysis of Pagefile and hibersys File in Physical Memory


Pagefile.sys:
Microsoft Windows uses a paging file, called pagefile.sys, to store frames of memory that do not current fit into physical memory. Although Windows supports up to 16 paging files, in practice normally only one is used.

Hiberfil.sys: hiberfil file stores the data when Microsoft windows computer system is on Hibernate mode.
These files are very useful for digital investigation because these files are not stored in physical Hard Disk

https://www.hackingarticles.in/forensics-analysis-of-pagefile-and-hibersys-file-in-physical-memory/


  • How to extract forensic artifacts from pagefile.sys?


Microsoft Windows uses a paging file, called pagefile.sys, to store page-size blocks of memory that do not current fit into physical memory.
This file, stored in %SystemDrive%\pagefile.sys is a hidden system file and it can never be read or accessed by a user, including Administrator.
It is possible to read this file by parsing the raw file system, or exact it using tools like FTKImager.

Analysis with YARA rules
you may scan the pagefile.sys using YARA.
you may scan the pagefile in order to seek some malware artifacts not found in the volatile memory:
https://www.andreafortuna.org/2019/04/17/how-to-extract-forensic-artifacts-from-pagefile-sys/



  • Finding malware on memory dumps using Volatility and Yara rules


a brief and simple workflow, useful for a first high-level analysis of memory dumps in order to search the presence of a generic malware

During the first phase of a memory dump analysis, could be useful check the dump for the presence of artifacts related to the most known malware: but to performs this operation should be needed to scan the image with all rules located in “malware” section of repository.

The memory analysis with Volatility
Although all Volatility commands can help you find malware, there are a few designed specifically for hunting rootkits and malicious code.

One of this is the “yarascan” plugin, that can help you locate any sequence of bytes (like assembly instructions with wild cards), regular expressions, ANSI strings, or Unicode strings in user mode or kernel memory.
https://www.andreafortuna.org/2018/07/16/finding-malware-on-memory-dumps-using-volatility-and-yara-rules/


  • WHAT IS UNALLOCATED SPACE AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?


Just what is unallocated space, and why is it important? Data and information are located in two areas on a computer’s hard drive: allocated and unallocated space. Allocated space typically contains all active system and user generated data, including email messages, documents, photographs, log files, and database files in an organized structure that allows for easy access and retrieval. Unallocated space on the computer is where deleted documents, file system information, and other electronic artifacts reside on the hard drive, which is often able to be recovered and analyzed through a forensic investigation. Unlike allocated space on the hard drive, the electronic evidence in unallocated space may be overwritten (and thus lost completely) with new data as the computer continues to be used.

For example, nefariously deleted documents can be recovered using data carving tools which enable the reconstruction of file fragments by scanning the raw bytes of the disk and reassembling them. Similarly, fragments of emails from a web-based personal email account of the departed employee to a competitor may exist in unallocated space which would prove the theft of company trade secrets and establish the participation of the competitor in the theft
https://insights.bit-x-bit.com/computerforensics/what-is-unallocated-space-and-why-does-it-matter/




  •  Splunk App for Stream for Enhanced Operational Intelligence from Wire Data 

  Custom Content Extraction Enables Efficient Real-Time Insights
  Improved Security Posture
  • Easily and selectively analyze web traffic for security risks
  • Identify data exfiltration, including PII or exposed assets
  • Prevent data loss, perform forensics and reduce troubleshooting time

  Efficient Real-Time Business Analyses
 
  • Real-time granular insights into key business indicators from web traffic
  • Selective on-the-fly visibility into shopping carts, user interactions, etc.

   Efficient IT Ops and Applications Visibility
  • Monitor web services performance on-the-fly for quick troubleshooting and performance analysis
  • Enable real-time custom protocol monitoring
  https://www.slideshare.net/Splunk/splunk-app-for-stream-nyc-deck


  • FOR500: Windows Forensic Analysis


FOR500.1: Windows Digital Forensics And Advanced Data Triage
Exercises
    Install the Windows SIFT Workstation and get an orientation about its operations
    Image a hard drive for evidence using a WiebeTech UltraDock Write Blocker
    Undertake advanced triage-based acquisition and imaging - rapid acquisition
    Mount acquired disk images and evidence
    Carve important files from free space
    Recover critical user data from the pagefile, hibernation file, memory images, and unallocated space
    Recover chat sessions, web-based email, social networking, and private browsing

FOR500.2: Core Windows Forensics Part I: Windows Registry Forensics And Analysis   
Exercises

    Profile a computer system using evidence found in the Registry
    Conduct a detailed profile of user activity using Registry evidence
    Examine which programs a user recently executed by examining Registry-based UserAssist, AppCompability, Amcache, RecentApps, BAM/DAM, and others
    Determine which files a user recently opened via the RecentDocs keys in the Registry
    Examine recently opened Office 365 files and determine first/last open times
    Find folders recently accessed by a user via the Open/Save keys in the Registry

FOR500.3: Core Windows Forensics Part II: Usb Devices And Shell Items
Exercises

    Track USB and BYOD devices that were connected to the system via the Registry and file system
    Determine first and last connected times of USB devices that are plugged into your system
    Determine last removal time of USB devices that are plugged into your system
    Use Shortcut (LNK) file analysis to determine first/last times a file was opened
    Use Shellbag Registry Key Analysis to determine when a folder was accessed
    Use a jump list examination to determine when files were accessed by specific programs
    Unlock BitLocker-To-Go encrypted USB devices


FOR500.4: Core Windows Forensics Part III: Email, Key Additional Artifacts, and Event Logs
Exercises

    Employ best-of-breed forensic tools to search for relevant email and file attachments in large data sets
    Analyze message headers and gauge email authenticity using SPF and DKIM
    Understand how Extended MAPI Headers can be used in an investigation
    Effectively collect evidence from Exchange and Office365
    Learn the latest on Unified Audit Logs in Office365
    Search for Webmail and Mobile Email remnants
    Understand key concepts like email object filtering, de-duplication, and message similarity
    Use forensic software to recover deleted objects from email archives
    Gain experience with a commercial email forensics and e-discovery tool
    Perform data visualization and timeline analysis
    Analyze document metadata present in email archives
    Analyze the various versions of the Windows Recycle Bin
    Analyze Windows Prefetch files to determine thousands of application execution times
    Use the System Resource Usage Monitor (SRUM) to answer questions never before available in Windows forensics
    Merge event logs and perform advanced filtering
    Profile account usage and determine logon session length
    Audit file and folder access
    Identify evidence of time manipulation on a system
    Supplement registry analysis with BYOD device auditing, including new Windows 10 events
    Analyze historical records of wireless network associations and geolocate a device

FOR500.5: Core Windows Forensics Part IV: Web Browser Forensics for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome
Exercises

    Track a suspect's activity in browser history and cache files and identify local file access
    Analyze artifacts found within the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) database format
    Examine which files a suspect downloaded
    Determine URLs that suspects typed, clicked on, bookmarked, or merely popped up while they were browsing
    Parse automatic crash recovery files to reconstruct previous browser sessions
    Leverage Google Analytics cookies to profile user behaviors
    Learn to manually parse SQLite databases from Firefox and Chrome
    Identify anti-forensics activity and re-construct private browsing sessions
    Investigate browser auto-complete data
   

FOR500.1: Windows Digital Forensics And Advanced Data Triage
Install the Windows SIFT Workstation
Image a hard drive for evidence using a WiebeTech UltraDock Write Blocker

FOR500.2: Core Windows Forensics Part I: Windows Registry Forensics And Analysis
        Registry Explorer
        TZWork's CAFAE and YARU (Yet Another Registry Utility)

FOR500.5: Core Windows Forensics Part IV: Web Browser Forensics for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome       
Tools Used

    Nirsoft Tools
    SQLite Parsers
    ESE DatabaseView
    Hindsight

https://www.sans.org/course/windows-forensic-analysis


  • Forensic Artifacts: evidences of program execution on Windows systems

Background Activity Moderator (BAM)
BAM is a Windows service that Controls activity of background applications
https://www.andreafortuna.org/2018/05/23/forensic-artifacts-evidences-of-program-execution-on-windows-systems/


  • Personal data, also known as personal information, personally identifying information (PII)

sensitive personal information (SPI)
any information relating to identifying a person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_data

Sunday, October 13, 2019

forensic interview questions


  • Computer Forensics Interview Questions


What is MD5 checksum?
MD5 checksum is a 128 bit value that helps identify the uniqueness of a file

What is an .ISO file?
An ISO file contains an application or CD image of several files and executables. Most app software can be made into an ISO that you then mount as a virtual drive and can browse files within the ISO.

What is a SAM file?
A SAM, or Security Accounts Manager, file is a file specifically used in Windows computers to store user passwords. It’s used to authenticate both remote and local Windows users, and can be used to gain access to a user’s computer.

What is data mining?
Data mining is the process of recording as much data as possible to create reports and analysis on user input

What is data carving?
Data carving is different than data mining in that data carving searches through raw data on a hard drive without using a file system. Data carving is essential for computer forensics investigators to find data when a hard drive’s data is corrupted.

What is steganography?
Steganography conceals a message within a message.

Describe the SHA-1 hash
The secure hash algorithm 1 is a hash algorithm that creates a 160-bit or 20-byte message digest.

How would you handle retrieving data from an encrypted hard drive?
First determine the encryption method used. For simple encryption types, try finding the configuration file. Use tools such as EaseUS Data Recovery, Advanced EFS Data Recovery or Elcomsoft Forensic Disk Decryptor. You can also use brute force methods.

What is an ACL?
An access control list. It is a list used to grant users and processes access to system resources.

How would you be able to tell at the hex level that a file has been deleted in FAT12?
Run fsstat against the FAT partition to gather details.
Run fls to get information about the image files.
This will return information about deleted files and the metatdata information.

What is a form of simple encryption often used by an intruder or criminal?
XOR (exclusive OR)

If you needed to encrypt and compress data for transmission, which would you do first and why?
Compress then encrypt. Because encryption takes up resources and can be cumbersome to perform, it makes sense to compress the data first.

What is the difference between threat, vulnerability and risk?
A threat is what a potential attacker poses, by potentially using a system vulnerability that was never identified as a risk
A threat is the possibility of an attack.
A vulnerability is a weakness in the system.
Risks are items that may cause harm to the system or organization

https://resources.infosecinstitute.com/category/computerforensics/introduction/computer-forensics-interview-questions/#gref

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Cyber Threat Intelligence

  • Using ATT&CK to Advance Cyber Threat Intelligence – Part 1


The ATT&CK knowledge base is used as a foundation for the development of specific threat models and methodologies in the private sector, in government, and in the cybersecurity product and service community.
This post outlines how ATT&CK can help analysts improve how we perform cyber threat intelligence.

A Traditional Cyber Threat Intelligence Approach
we define cyber threat intelligence as the process of analyzing information about adversaries, as well as the output of that analysis, in a way that can be applied to help network defenders and decisionmakers.
Indicator extraction tools and machine-to-machine sharing through structured languages like STIX can help remove the need for manual analyst processing.
The Pyramid of Pain encourages us to focus on actor tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), which cause the most pain (or hassle) for an adversary to change.
While the community largely accepts that we need to move to TTPs, analysts struggle with how to track them in a way that facilitates actionable detection and mitigation.

How ATT&CK Can Help
ATT&CK gives us a structured way to describe adversary TTPs and behavior.
This structure allows us to compare adversary groups to themselves, to other groups, and to defenses in a way that addresses some of the challenges discussed earlier. Analysts and defenders can both structure their information using ATT&CK: analysts can structure intelligence about adversary behavior, and defenders can structure information about what behavior they can detect and mitigate.
This concept applies to all flavors of ATT&CK, including Enterprise ATT&CK, PRE-ATT&CK, and Mobile ATT&CK
ATT&CK also provides a common language for analysts to use when describing adversary behavior.
ATT&CK gives analysts a set of definitions for behavior they can use to be sure that they clearly communicate. This normalization allows analysts to use reports from a variety of sources to perform analysis of ATT&CK techniques.
Structuring TTPs gives us a way to count them, which helps make adversaries and defenses measurable. Metrics about TTPs provide an easy supplement to indicator counts that some organizations rely on to demonstrate the value of CTI.
https://www.mitre.org/capabilities/cybersecurity/overview/cybersecurity-blog/using-attck-to-advance-cyber-threat



  • Using ATT&CK to Advance Cyber Threat Intelligence – Part 2


We regularly comb through open source reporting to find examples of Groups and Software samples to add to the ATT&CK website. The process of converting unstructured prose reporting into structured ATT&CK technique examples allows analysts to do valuable comparisons of threat groups to each other or threat groups to defenses

Figure Out Where to Store It
Before you get started, you should determine where to store the results of your analysis. If you already have an existing threat intelligence repository or database, we'd suggest modifying it to allow you to enter ATT&CK technique information. ATT&CK in STIX/TAXII 2.0 format could help you pull the data you would need to start those modifications.
You could also consider using a threat intelligence platform such as MISP1 -- in fact, MISP has an existing ATT&CK galaxy that could help you out.

Use our Website
Before getting started, we highly recommend you take a careful look at our ATT&CK website. Skim through the descriptions of the tactics (the adversary’s goals) and techniques (how the adversary accomplishes those goals) so you have an idea of what’s available to you to "bin" information about adversary behavior

Start at the Tactic Level
here are only 11 tactics in Enterprise ATT&CK, which is much easier to track. Once you’ve decided on the tactic, bring up the page to view techniques that fall under that tactic, and make a selection from there.

Choose Appropriate Information
Certain types of reporting, such as information about API calls in static malware analysis, are usually not fruitful when analyzing for ATT&CK techniques.
Dynamic malware analysis that includes malware behavior can also be useful to apply techniques to Software samples.

Examples from the Community
Palo Alto's Unit 422 recently published Adversary Playbooks for OilRig and Sofacy that use PRE-ATT&CK and ATT&CK techniques to describe the groups.
McAfee has also started listing ATT&CK techniques along with indicator lists at the end of some blog posts.
https://www.mitre.org/capabilities/cybersecurity/overview/cybersecurity-blog/using-attck-to-advance-cyber-threat-0
  • The WASC Threat Classification v2.0

Description

The WASC Threat Classification is a cooperative effort to clarify and organize the threats to the security of a web site. The members of the Web Application Security Consortium have created this project to develop and promote industry standard terminology for describing these issues.
http://projects.webappsec.org/w/page/13246978/Threat%20Classification

WASC Threat Classification v2.0 report
This report displays WASC threat classification issues found on your site.
WASC web application threat classification list

Abuse of Functionality: Abuse of Functionality is an attack technique that uses a website's own features and functionality to consume, defraud or circumvent access control mechanisms.

Brute Force: A Brute Force attack is an automated process of trial and error used to guess a person's username, password, credit-card number or cryptographic key.

Buffer Overflow: Buffer Overflow exploits are attacks that alter the flow of an application by overwriting parts of the memory.

Content Spoofing: Content Spoofing is an attack technique used to trick a user into believing that certain content appearing on a website is legitimate and not from an external source.

Credential/Session Prediction: Credential/Session Prediction is a method of hijacking or impersonating a website user. Deducing or guessing the unique value that identifies a particular session or user accomplishes the attack.

Cross-site Scripting: Cross-site Scripting (XSS) is an attack technique that forces a website to echo attacker-supplied executable code, which loads in a user's browser. A Cross-site Scripted user might have his account hijacked (cookie theft), their browser redirected to another location, or possibly shown fraudulent content delivered by the website they are visiting.

Denial of Service: Denial of Service (DoS) is an attack technique with the intent of preventing a website from serving normal user activity.

Directory Indexing: Automatic directory listing/indexing is a server function that lists all of the files within a requested directory if the normal base file (index.html/home.html/default.htm) is not present.

Format String Attack: Format String Attacks alter the flow of an application by using string formatting library features to access other memory space.

Information Leakage: Information Leakage is when a website reveals sensitive data, such as developer comments or error messages, which might aid an attacker in exploiting the system.

Insufficient Anti-automation: Insufficient Anti-automation is when a website permits an attacker to automate a process that should only be performed manually.

Insufficient Authentication: Insufficient Authentication occurs when a website permits an attacker to access sensitive content or functionality without properly authenticating his access permissions.

Insufficient Authorization: Insufficient Authorization is when a website permits access to sensitive content or functionality that should require increased access control restrictions.

Insufficient Process Validation: Insufficient Process Validation is when a website permits an attacker to bypass or circumvent the intended flow control of an application.

Insufficient Session Expiration: Insufficient Session Expiration is when a website permits an attacker to reuse old session credentials or session IDs for authorization. Insufficient Session Expiration increases a website's exposure to attacks that steal or impersonate other users.

LDAP Injection: LDAP Injection is an attack technique used to exploit websites that construct Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) statements from user-supplied input.

OS Commanding: OS Commanding is an attack technique used to exploit websites by executing Operating System commands through manipulation of application input.

Path Traversal: The Path Traversal attack technique forces access to files, directories, and commands that may potentially be located outside the document root directory. An attacker might manipulate a URL in such a way that the website will run or reveal the contents of arbitrary files anywhere on the web server.

Predictable Resource Location: Predictable Resource Location is an attack technique used to uncover hidden website content and functionality. By making educated guesses, the attack is a brute force search looking for content that is not intended for public viewing. Temporary files, backup files, configuration files, and sample files are all examples of potentially leftover files.

Session Fixation: Session Fixation is an attack technique that forces a user's session ID to an explicit value.

SQL Injection: SQL Injection is an attack technique used to exploit websites that construct SQL statements from user-supplied input.

SSI Injection: SSI Injection (Server-side Include) is a server-side exploit technique that allows an attacker to send code into a application, which will later be executed locally by the web server.

Weak Password Recovery Validation: Weak Password Recovery Validation is when a website permits an attacker to illegally obtain, change or recover another user's password.

XPath Injection: XPath Injection is an attack technique used to exploit websites that construct XPath queries from user-supplied input.

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSW2NF_9.0.3/com.ibm.ase.help.doc/topics/r_wasc_threat_classifications_report.html?view=embed


  • OWASP Automated Threat Handbook Web Applications

Use Case Scenarios
Scenario: Defining application development security requirements
Scenario: Sharing intelligence within a sector
Scenario: Exchanging threat data between CERTs
Scenario: Enhancing application penetration test findings
Scenario: Specifying service acquisition needs
Scenario: Characterising vendor services
https://www.owasp.org/images/3/33/Automated-threat-handbook.pdf


  • Software Security AssuranceState-of-the-Art Report (SOAR)July 31, 2007

there have been severalattempts at categorizing and classifying software based attack patterns, including

CAPEC: Initiated by the DHS Software Assurance Program in 2006, the Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC) project will define a standard taxonomy of definitions, classifications, and categorizations of software-targeting attack patterns.

WASC Threat Classification: An effort by members of Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) to classify and describe security threats to web applications. The main objective of the threat classification effort is “to develop and promote industry standard terminology for describing these issues. Application developers, security professionals, software vendors, and compliance auditors will have the ability to access a consistent language for web security related issues

SearchSecurity.com Web Application Attacks Learning Guide: [59]An informal taxonomy of web application and web service attacks that is tutorial in nature.
https://cwe.mitre.org/documents/iatac_swa_soar.pdf



  • Understanding how the adversary operates is essential to effective cyber security. CAPEC™ helps by providing a comprehensive dictionary of known patterns of attack employed by adversaries to exploit known weaknesses in cyber-enabled capabilities.

https://capec.mitre.org/



  • How to install and configure AlienVault OSSIM 5.5 on VirtualBox


    Event collection: AlienVault has the ability to collect logs from various sources in your environment, host servers and systems, applications running on servers, network devices, such as firewalls and routers, name them endpoints in your environment.
    Event normalization: The attributes of the collected logs are extracted and stored in the common data fields hat define an event such as IP addresses, hostnames, usernames, interfac- names, ports, programs etc. This allows analysts to run queries across collected events for better and quicker analysis.
    Event correlation: This involves analyzing relationships between the collected events to identify the pattern of events.
OSSIM provides a unified platform that bundles together security capabilities such as Asset discovery, Host Intrusion Detection, Network Intrusion Detection, Behavioral monitoring, Asset Discovery, Vulnerability Assessment, Log management. It also leverages the power of the AlienVault Open Threat Exchange (OTX), the open threat intelligence community delivers community-generated threat data, enables collaborative research, and automates the process of updating your security infrastructure with threat data from any source.
https://kifarunix.com/how-to-install-and-configure-alienvault-ossim-5-5-on-virtualbox/

What Are the Phases of the Threat Intelligence Lifecycle?
https://www.recordedfuture.com/threat-intelligence-lifecycle-phases/




  • OASIS Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) TC

    Supporting automated information sharing for cybersecurity situational awareness, real-time network defense, and sophisticated threat analysis
    https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=cti

  • Kusto Query Language

Kusto Query Language is a simple yet powerful language to query structured, semi-structured and unstructured data.
https://github.com/microsoft/Kusto-Query-Language

  • KQL stands for Kusto Query Language. It’s the language used to query the Azure log databases: Azure Monitor Logs, Azure Monitor Application Insights and others.

https://squaredup.com/blog/kusto-101-a-jumpstart-guide-to-kql/

  • The Ariel Query Language (AQL) is a structured query language that you use to communicate with the Ariel databases. You can use AQL to extract, filter, and perform actions on event and flow data that you extract from the Ariel database in IBM Security QRadar

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS42VS_7.3.2/com.ibm.qradar.doc/b_qradar_aql.pdf

  • The Seven-Step Information Gathering Process

The EC-Council divides footprinting and scanning into seven basic steps
    Information gathering
    Determining the network range
    Identifying active machines
    Finding open ports and access points
    OS fingerprinting
    Fingerprinting services
    Mapping the network
http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/articles/article.aspx?p=472323&seqNum=5

  • OpenIOC: Back to the Basics

One challenge investigators face during incident response is finding a way to organize information about an attackers' activity, utilities, malware and other indicators of compromise, called IOCs.
OpenIOC provides a standard format and terms for describing the artifacts encountered during the course of an investigation. In this post we're going to provide a high-level overview of IOCs, including IOC use cases, the structure of an IOC and IOC logic.
Before we continue, it's important to mention that IOCs are not signatures, and they aren't meant to function as a signature would. It is often understated, but an IOC is meant to be used in combination with human intelligence. IOCs are designed to aid in your investigation, or the investigations of others with whom you share threat intelligence.

IOC Use Cases:
Find malware/utility: This is the most common use case. Essentially, this is an IOC written to find some type of known malware or utility, either by looking for attributes of the binary, itself, or for some artifact created upon execution, such as a prefetch file or registry key.
Methodology: Unlike an IOC written to identify malware or utilities, these IOCs find things you don't necessarily know about, in order to generate investigative leads. For example, if you wanted to identify any service DLL that wasn't signed and which was loaded from any directory that did not include the path "windowssystem32", you could write an IOC to describe that condition. Another good example of a methodology IOC is an IOC that looks for the Registry text value of all "Run" keys for a string ending ".jpg". This represents an abnormal condition which upon investigation may lead to evidence of a compromise.
Bulk: You may already be using this kind of IOC. Many organizations subscribe to threat intelligence feeds that deliver a list of MD5s or IP addresses; a bulk IOC can represent a collection of those indicators. These kinds of IOCs are very black and white and are typically only good for an exact match.
Investigative: As you investigate systems in an environment and identify evidence of malicious activity such as metadata related to the installation of backdoors, execution of tools, or files being staged for theft, you can track that information in an IOC. These IOCs are similar to bulk IOCs; however, an investigative IOC only contains indicators from a single investigation. Using this type of IOC can help you to prioritize which systems you want to analyze.

Definition: This is the content of the IOC, containing the artifacts that an investigator decided to codify in the IOC. For example, these may include the MD5 of a file, a registry path or something found in process memory. Inside the definition, indicators are listed out or combined into expressions that consist of two terms and some form of Boolean logic.
One thing about the OpenIOC format that makes it particularly useful is the ability to combine similar terms using Boolean AND & OR logic. The previous example shows how this type of logic can be used.
https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2013/10/openioc-basics.html

  • Prefetch is a feature, introduced in Windows XP and still used in Windows 10, that stores specific data about the applications you run in order to help them start faster

Superfetch is a feature that attempts to determine which applications you will launch and then loads up all the necessary files and data into memory. Both of these features require quite a few read and write operations in order to work.
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/delete-disable-windows-prefetch/

  • Investigating Prefetch

I suggest that the place to start is not with Regedit, but in the Windows\Prefetch folder.  A quick inspection will reveal: NTOSBOOT-B00DFAAD.pf and probably other .pf (PreFetch) files.  As the machine boots, or applications open, so the Cache Manager monitors the disk access.  The idea is that the next time the machine starts or an application executes, the Cache Manager reads the file the appropriate .pf file with its prediction of the disk areas that will be needed in the first 10 seconds of starting.
https://www.computerperformance.co.uk/registry/registry-hacks-prefetch/

  • OpenIOC is designed to fill a void that currently exists for organizations that want to share threat information both internally and externally in a machine-digestible format. OpenIOC is an extensible XML schema that enables you to describe the technical characteristics that identify a known threat, an attacker’s methodology, or other evidence of compromise.


Why OpenIOC
Sophisticated Indicators – Traditional methods of identifying security breaches no longer work. Simple signatures are too easy for an intruder to circumvent. Organizations need to be able to communicate how to find attackers on their networks and hosts using a machine digestible format that removes human delay from intelligence sharing.
Extendable & Customizable – By allowing for extensions and customization, OpenIOC offers your organization the option of using MANDIANT’s field tested Indicators of Compromise, as well as creating your own custom sets of indicators, and any combination thereof that you need to complete your mission.

The Framework Schema
It’s Really Simple – The base OpenIOC schema is a simple framework that is written in XML to document and categorize forensic artifacts of an intrusion that can be identified on a host or network. You can easily extend the base schema to include additional indicators from a variety of sources.
Mandiant Indicators – OpenIOC ships with a base set of indicators provided by MANDIANT.
https://www.darknet.org.uk/2016/06/openioc-sharing-threat-intelligence/


  • Structured Threat Information Expression (STIX™) is a language and serialization format used to exchange cyber threat intelligence (CTI). 

STIX is designed to improve many different capabilities, such as collaborative threat analysis, automated threat exchange, automated detection and response, and more.
Trusted Automated Exchange of Intelligence Information (TAXII™) is an application layer protocol for the communication of cyber threat information in a simple and scalable manner.

TAXII is a protocol used to exchange cyber threat intelligence (CTI) over HTTPS. TAXII enables organizations to share CTI by defining an API that aligns with common sharing models.
https://oasis-open.github.io/cti-documentation/






  • What is a gap analysis?

A gap analysis is an examination and assessment of your current performance for the purpose of identifying the differences between your current state of business and where you’d like to be. It can be boiled down into a few questions:

    Where are we now?
    Where do we wish we were?
    How are we going to close the gap?
https://www.clearpointstrategy.com/gap-analysis-template/

  • In management literature, gap analysis involves the comparison of actual performance with potential or desired performance
Gap analysis identifies gaps between the optimized allocation and integration of the inputs (resources), and the current allocation-level.
This reveals areas that can be improved. Gap analysis involves determining, documenting and improving the difference between business requirements and current capabilities. 
Gap analysis naturally flows from benchmarking and from other assessments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gap_analysis



  • What Is Threat Intelligence?

“Threat intelligence is evidence-based knowledge, including context, mechanisms, indicators, implications and action-oriented advice about an existing or emerging menace or hazard to assets. This intelligence can be used to inform decisions regarding the subject’s response to that menace or hazard.”

The Threat Intelligence Lifecycle
1. Planning and Direction
The first step to producing actionable threat intelligence is to ask the right question.
The questions that best drive the creation of actionable threat intelligence focus on a single fact, event, or activity — broad, open-ended questions should usually be avoided.

2. Collection
3. Processing
4. Analysis
5. Dissemination
6. Feedback

The Types of Threat Intelligence
Threat intelligence is often broken down into three subcategories:

    Strategic — Broader trends typically meant for a non-technical audience
    Tactical — Outlines of the tactics, techniques, and procedures of threat actors for a more technical audience
    Operational — Technical details about specific attacks and campaigns


Strategic Threat Intelligence
the content is generally less technical and is presented through reports or briefings.
Good strategic intelligence should provide insight into areas like the risks associated with certain lines of action, broad patterns in threat actor tactics and targets, and geopolitical events and trends

Common sources of information for strategic threat intelligence include:
Policy documents from nation-states or nongovernmental organizations
News from local and national media, industry- and subject-specific publications, or other subject-matter experts
White papers, research reports, and other content produced by security organizations


Tactical Threat Intelligence
Tactical threat intelligence outlines the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of threat actors. I
in specific terms, how their organization might be attacked and the best ways to defend against or mitigate those attacks.
It usually includes technical context, and is used by personnel directly involved in the defense of an organization, such as system architects, administrators, and security staff.
Reports produced by security vendors are often the easiest way to get tactical threat intelligence
Look for information in reports about the attack vectors, tools, and infrastructure that attackers are using, including specifics about what vulnerabilities are being targeted and what exploits attackers are leveraging, as well as what strategies and tools that they may be using to avoid or delay detection.

Operational Threat Intelligence
Operational intelligence is knowledge about cyber attacks, events, or campaigns
A common source of technical information is threat data feeds, which usually focus on a single type of indicator, like malware hashes or suspicious domains.

https://www.recordedfuture.com/threat-intelligence/
  • What Is Tactical Threat Intelligence?

Tactical threat intelligence provides information about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by threat actors to achieve their goals (e.g., to compromise networks, exfiltrate data, and so on). It’s intended to help defenders understand how their organization is likely to be attacked, so they can determine whether appropriate detection and mitigation mechanisms exist or whether they need to be implemented.

Unlike strategic threat intelligence, which is almost exclusively non-technical, tactical threat intelligence is intended for a predominantly technical audience, and usually includes some technical context. In particular, tactical threat intelligence is consumed by personnel directly involved in the defense of an organization, such as system architects, administrators, and security staff, although it does also play a role in higher-level security decision making.

Since threat actor TTPs change all the time, tactical threat intelligence is usually gathered during the course of normal intelligence operations, rather than on request.

Sources of Tactical Threat Intelligence
For the typical organization, reports produced by security vendors and other industry players are the most easily accessible source of tactical threat intelligence. In many cases, these reports focus on a specific threat group or attack campaign, and provide key tactical information such as:

    Locations and industries targeted
    Attack vectors employed (e.g., spear phishing, SQL injection, etc.)
    Tools and technical infrastructure used

While these reports can be extremely valuable, they are produced for a wide audience, and consequently only a small proportion will be relevant to any specific organization. For this reason, industry reports are at best an incomplete source of tactical threat intelligence

A more thorough and reliable stream of tactical threat intelligence requires an active gathering process, which can include any or all of the following sources:

    Open source
    Honeypots and darknets
    Telemetry data
    Scanning and crawling
    Malware analysis
    Closed source
    Human relationships

For most organizations, purchasing tactical threat intelligence from dedicated security vendors is a more realistic proposition.

Discerning Threat Actor TTPs

Tactical threat intelligence falls into four primary categories:

1. Attack Vectors
2. Tools
3. Infrastructure
4. Forensic Avoidance Strategies

https://www.recordedfuture.com/tactical-threat-intelligence/

  • 1. Strategic Threat Intelligence :
Strategic threat intelligence provides high-level information relating to cyber security posture, threats
2. Tactical Threat Intelligence :
Tactical threat intelligence plays a serious role in protective the resources of the organization. It provides info related to TTPs used by threat actors (attackers) to perform attacks. Tactical threat intelligence is consumed by cyber security professionals such as IT service managers, security operations managers, network operations center {NOC) employees, administrators, and architects.
3. Operational Threat Intelligence :
Operational threat intelligence provides info above specific threats against the organization. It provides contextual info above security events and incidents that help defenders disclose potential risks, offer bigger insight into offender methodologies, establish past malicious activities, and perform investigations on malicious activity in a very more economical way
4. Technical Threat Intelligence:
Technical threat intelligence provides information above an attacker’s resources that are used to perform the attack; this includes command and control channels, tools, etc
It has a shorter lifespan compared to tactical threat intelligence and mainly focuses on a specific loC

https://info-savvy.com/types-of-threat-intelligence/

  • Types of threat intelligence

1. Strategic threat intelligence

Strategic threat intelligence provides high-level analysis typically reserved for non-technical audiences such as stakeholders or board members
Strategic threat intelligence sources are unlike other intelligence categories because the majority of the data comes from open sources, meaning it can be accessed by anyone. A few examples include local and national media, white papers and reports, online activity and articles, and security ratings

2. Tactical threat intelligence
Tactical threat intelligence focuses on the immediate future and helps teams determine whether or not existing security programs will be successful in detecting and managing risk.
Tactical intelligence highlights indicators of compromise (IOCs) and allows responders to search for and eliminate specific threats within a network
Tactical intelligence is the most basic form of threat intelligence and is typically automated because it can be easily generated. For this same reason, tactical intelligence usually has a short lifespan as many IOCs become obsolete in a matter of hours. 

3. Operational threat intelligence
Operational threat intelligence aims to answer the questions, “who?”, “what?”, and “how?” and is gained by examining the details of past known attacks. . It helps security teams understand the details surrounding specific cyber-attacks by providing context for factors such as intent, timing, and sophistication.

https://securityscorecard.com/blog/what-is-cyber-threat-intelligence-3-types-and-examples












  • MITRE ATT&CK vs. Cyber Kill Chain vs. Diamond Model

The Cyber Kill Chain, as it is currently called, breaks down an intrusion into a well-defined sequence of seven phases from Reconnaissance to Actions on Objectives.

The Diamond Model emphasizes the relationships and characteristics of an intrusion’s four core features: adversary, infrastructure, capability, and victim.

Cyber Kill Chain and MITRE ATT&CK both follow the typical narrative of an attack — for example, break in, be stealthy, steal some data. However, while the Cyber Kill Chain has a clearly defined linear sequence of phases, the ATT&CK Framework is a matrix of intrusion techniques that is not confined to a specific order of operations.

https://medium.com/cycraft/cycraft-classroom-mitre-att-ck-vs-cyber-kill-chain-vs-diamond-model-1cc8fa49a20f
  • Roles that Use Threat Intelligence Platforms

Security analyst and IT analyst
Use threat intelligence to optimize prevention and detection capabilities and develop stronger defenses

Analyst use cases

    Integrate threat intelligence feeds with other security products
    Block bad IPs, URLs, domains, files, and more



Security Operations Center (SOC)
Prioritize incident response based on risk and impact to the organization.

SOC use cases

    Use threat intel to enrich alerts
    Link alerts into incidents
    Reduce false positives and alert fatigue 

Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT)
Speeds the investigation, management, and prioritization of a security event.

CSIRT use cases

    Look for information on the motives, attributions and tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) of an incident
    Analyze root cause to determine the scope of an inciden

Intel analyst

Uncovers and tracks threat activity targeting the organization, thereby gaining a better understanding of the relevant aspects of the current threat landscape and performing advanced analysis to understand quickly the context organizational alerts across known actors, campaigns, incidents, malware, signatures, TTPs and vulnerabilities.

Intel analyst use cases

    Aggregate structured and unstructured data (reports) related to threat actors to learn to detect them better
    Enables Alert Triage and incident response
    Directs Vulnerability patch prioritization



https://www.crowdstrike.com/cybersecurity-101/threat-intelligence/threat-intelligence-platforms/

  • If you apply Pereto’s Principal (the 80/20 rule) to network security, about 80% of incidents are caused by known threats that are easily identified by signature-based rules system and 20% come from previously unknown threats, which are often the most damaging and costly.

Suricata and Zeek perform two different types of network protection and both are needed if you want to find known and unknown threats.
Suricata is the gold standard of signature-based threat detection engines
Suricata enables high performance traffic inspection and quickly processes many rules against large volumes of network traffic.
Suricata is compatible with the vast repositories of Snort rules and supports the LUA scripting language so users can create rules to detect complex threats.

Zeek was initially designed to be a Swiss Army knife for network metadata monitoring
It monitors traffic streams and produces logs that record everything it understands about the network activity and other metadata that is useful for analyzing and understanding the context of network behavior
Much of the metadata Zeek produces was previously available only from packet capture (PCAP) data
 

    Suricata is far more efficient than Zeek at monitoring traffic for known threats and producing alerts when they are detected. Another benefit is that new threat intelligence is often available first in a format compatible with Suricata.

    Zeek delivers the large volumes of high-quality data needed to provide comprehensive network traffic visibility and context, and enable network baselining, host and service profiling, passive inventory collection, policy enforcement, anomaly detection and threat hunting efforts.

https://bricata.com/blog/suricata-or-zeek-the-answer-is-both/