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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
Updated and revised edition of the bestselling guide to developing defense strategies against the latest threats to cybersecurity
Key Features
- Covers the latest security threats and defense strategies for 2020
- Introduces techniques and skillsets required to conduct threat hunting and deal with a system breach
- Provides new information on Cloud Security Posture Management, Microsoft Azure Threat Protection, Zero Trust Network strategies, Nation State attacks, the use of Azure Sentinel as a cloud-based SIEM for logging and investigation, and much more
Book Description
Cybersecurity – Attack and Defense Strategies, Second Edition is a completely revised new edition of the bestselling book, covering the very latest security threats and defense mechanisms including a detailed overview of Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and an assessment of the current threat landscape, with additional focus on new IoT threats and cryptomining.
Cybersecurity starts with the basics that organizations need to know to maintain a secure posture against outside threat and design a robust cybersecurity program. It takes you into the mindset of a Threat Actor to help you better understand the motivation and the steps of performing an actual attack – the Cybersecurity kill chain. You will gain hands-on experience in implementing cybersecurity using new techniques in reconnaissance and chasing a user’s identity that will enable you to discover how a system is compromised, and identify and then exploit the vulnerabilities in your own system.
This book also focuses on defense strategies to enhance the security of a system. You will also discover in-depth tools, including Azure Sentinel, to ensure there are security controls in each network layer, and how to carry out the recovery process of a compromised system.
What you will learn
- The importance of having a solid foundation for your security posture
- Use cyber security kill chain to understand the attack strategy
- Boost your organization’s cyber resilience by improving your security policies, hardening your network, implementing active sensors, and leveraging threat intelligence
- Utilize the latest defense tools, including Azure Sentinel and Zero Trust Network strategy
- Identify different types of cyberattacks, such as SQL injection, malware and social engineering threats such as phishing emails
- Perform an incident investigation using Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel
- Get an in-depth understanding of the disaster recovery process
- Understand how to consistently monitor security and implement a vulnerability management strategy for on-premises and hybrid cloud
- Learn how to perform log analysis using the cloud to identify suspicious activities, including logs from Amazon Web Services and Azure
Who this book is for
For the IT professional venturing into the IT security domain, IT pentesters, security consultants, or those looking to perform ethical hacking. Prior knowledge of penetration testing is beneficial.
Yuri Diogenes is a professor at EC-Council University for their master's degree in cybersecurity and a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft for Azure Security Center. Yuri has a Master of Science degree in cybersecurity from UTICA College, and an MBA from FGV Brazil. Yuri currently holds the following certifications: CISSP, CyberSec First Responder, CompTIA CSA+, E|CEH, E|CSA, E|CHFI, E|CND, CyberSec First Responder, CompTIA, Security+, CompTIA Cloud Essentials, Network+, Mobility+, CASP, CSA+, MCSE, MCTS, and Microsoft Specialist - Azure. Dr. Erdal Ozkaya is a leading Cybersecurity Professional with business development, management, and academic skills who focuses on securing the Cyber Space and sharing his real-life skills as a Security Advisor, Speaker, Lecturer, and Author. Erdal is known to be passionate about reaching communities, creating cyber awareness campaigns, and leveraging new and innovative approaches and technologies to holistically address the information security and privacy needs for every person and organization in the world. He is an award-winning technical expert and speaker: His recent awards include: Cyber Security Professional of the Year MEA, Hall of Fame by CISO Magazine, Cybersecurity Influencer of the Year (2019), Microsoft Circle of Excellence Platinum Club (2017), NATO Center of Excellence (2016) Security Professional of the Year by MEA Channel Magazine (2015), Professional of the Year Sydney (2014), and many speaker of the year awards in conferences. He also holds Global Instructor of the Year awards from EC Council and Microsoft. Erdal is also a part-time lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Erdal has co-authored many cybersecurity books as well as security certification courseware and exams for different vendors. Erdal has the following qualifications: Doctor of Philosophy in Cybersecurity, Master of Computing Research, Master of Information Systems Security, Bachelor of Information Technology, Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant, ISO27001 Auditor and Implementer, Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Certified Ethical Instructor and Licensed Penetration Tester, and 90+ other industry certifications.Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 685
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Cybersecurity – Attack and Defense Strategies
Second Edition
Counter modern threats and employ state-of-the-art tools and techniques to protect your organization against cybercriminals
Yuri Diogenes
Erdal Ozkaya
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Cybersecurity – Attack and Defense Strategies
Second Edition
Copyright © 2019 Packt Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the authors, nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.
Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.
Commissioning Editor: Vijin Boricha
Acquisition Editor: Ben Renow-Clarke
Acquisition Editor – Peer Reviews: Suresh Jain
Content Development Editor: Ian Hough
Technical Editor: Karan Sonawane
Project Editor: Tom Jacob
Proofreader: Safis Editing
Indexer: Rekha Nair
Presentation Designer: Pranit Padwal
First published: January 2018
Second edition: December 2019
Production reference: 1241219
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-83882-779-3
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Contributors
About the authors
Yuri Diogenes is a professor at EC-Council University for their master's degree in cybersecurity and a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft for Azure Security Center. Yuri has a Master of Science degree in cybersecurity from UTICA College, and an MBA from FGV Brazil. Yuri currently holds the following certifications: CISSP, CyberSec First Responder, CompTIA CSA+, E|CEH, E|CSA, E|CHFI, E|CND, CyberSec First Responder, CompTIA, Security+, CompTIA Cloud Essentials, Network+, Mobility+, CASP, CSA+, MCSE, MCTS, and Microsoft Specialist - Azure.
First and foremost, I would like to thank God for enabling me to write another book. I also would like to thank my wife, Alexsandra, and my daughters, Yanne and Ysis, for their unconditional support. To my co-author and friend, Erdal Ozkaya, for the great partnership. To the entire Packt Publishing team for their support throughout this project.
Dr. Erdal Ozkaya is a leading Cybersecurity Professional with business development, management, and academic skills who focuses on securing the Cyber Space and sharing his real-life skills as a Security Advisor, Speaker, Lecturer, and Author.
Erdal is known to be passionate about reaching communities, creating cyber awareness campaigns, and leveraging new and innovative approaches and technologies to holistically address the information security and privacy needs for every person and organization in the world.
He is an award-winning technical expert and speaker: His recent awards include: Cyber Security Professional of the Year MEA, Hall of Fame by CISO Magazine, Cybersecurity Influencer of the Year (2019), Microsoft Circle of Excellence Platinum Club (2017), NATO Center of Excellence (2016) Security Professional of the Year by MEA Channel Magazine (2015), Professional of the Year Sydney (2014), and many speaker of the year awards in conferences.
He also holds Global Instructor of the Year awards from EC Council and Microsoft. Erdal is also a part-time lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Australia.
Erdal has co-authored many cybersecurity books as well as security certification courseware and exams for different vendors.
Erdal has the following qualifications: Doctor of Philosophy in Cybersecurity, Master of Computing Research, Master of Information Systems Security, Bachelor of Information Technology, Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant, ISO27001 Auditor and Implementer, Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Certified Ethical Instructor and Licensed Penetration Tester, and 90+ other industry certifications.
Thank you:
To God
To my better half, Arzu, and my kids, Jemre and Azra, for all their support and love
To Yuri for being a good friend and partner in the project
To my family and real friends, for being there when I need them
To my readers, for providing feedback to make this award-winning book even better
To the entire Packt Publishing team for their support throughout this project
About the reviewers
Pascal Ackerman is a seasoned industrial security professional with a degree in electrical engineering and with 18 years of experience in industrial network design and support, information and network security, risk assessment, pentesting, threat hunting, and forensics. After almost two decades of hands-on, in-the-field, and consulting experience, he joined ThreatGEN in 2019 and is currently employed as Principal Analyst in Industrial Threat Intelligence and Forensics. His passion is in analyzing new and existing threats to ICS environments and he fights cyber adversaries both from his home base and while traveling the world with his family as a digital nomad.
Pascal wrote the book on Industrial Cybersecurity and has been a reviewer and technical consultant on a variety of Industrial Control System (ICS) and Information Technology (IT) and Maritime security books.
Chiheb Chebbi is a Tunisian InfoSec enthusiast, author, and a technical reviewer with experience in various aspects of Information Security. His core interest lies in "Penetration Testing", "Machine learning," and "Threat hunting". His talk proposals have been accepted by many world-class information security conferences.
Contents
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Security Posture
The current threat landscape
The credentials – authentication and authorization
Apps
Data
Cybersecurity challenges
Old techniques and broader results
The shift in the threat landscape
Enhancing your security posture
Cloud Security Posture Management
The Red and Blue Teams
Assume breach
Summary
References
Incident Response Process
The incident response process
Reasons to have an IR process in place
Creating an incident response process
Incident response team
Incident life cycle
Handling an incident
Best practices to optimize incident handling
Post-incident activity
Real-world scenario
Lessons learned
Incident response in the cloud
Updating your IR process to include cloud
Appropriate toolset
IR Process from the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) perspective
Summary
References
What is a Cyber Strategy?
Introduction
Why do we need to build a cyber strategy?
How to build a cyber strategy
Understand the business
Understand threats and risks
Document
Best cyber attack strategies (Red Team)
External testing strategies
Internal testing strategies
Blind testing strategy
Targeted testing strategy
Best cyber defense strategies (Blue Team)
Defense in depth
Defense in breadth
Summary
Further reading
Understanding the Cybersecurity Kill Chain
Introducing the Cyber Kill Chain
Reconnaissance
Weaponization
Privilege Escalation
Vertical privilege escalation
Horizontal privilege escalation
Exfiltration
Sustainment
Assault
Obfuscation
Obfuscation Techniques
Dynamic code obfuscation
Hiding Trails
Threat Life Cycle Management
Data Collection Phase
Discovery Phase
Qualification Phase
Investigation Phase
Neutralization Phase
Recovery Phase
Shared files
Tools used in the Cyber Kill Chain Phases
Nmap
Zenmap
Metasploit
John the Ripper
Hydra
Wireshark
Aircrack-ng
Nikto
Kismet
Airgeddon
Deauther Board
Mitigations against wireless attacks
EvilOSX
Cybersecurity Kill Chain Summary
Lab – Hacking Wireless Network/s via Evil Twin Attack
The Lab Scenario
Step 1 – Ensure you have all required hardware and software for the "simulated attack"
Step 2 – Install Airgeddon in Kali
Step 3 – Configure Airgeddon
Step 4 – Select target
Step 5 – Gather the handshake
Step 6 – Set the phishing page
Step 7 – Capture the network credentials
Lab Summary
References
Further reading
Reconnaissance
External reconnaissance
Webshag
PhoneInfoga
Email harvester – TheHarvester
Web Browser Enumeration Tools
Penetration Testing Kit
Netcraft
Dumpster diving
Social media
Social engineering
Pretexting
Diversion theft
Phishing
Keepnet Labs
Water holing
Baiting
Quid pro quo
Tailgating
Internal reconnaissance
Airgraph-ng
Sniffing and scanning
Prismdump
Tcpdump
Nmap
Wireshark
Scanrand
Masscan
Cain and Abel
Nessus
Metasploit
Aircrack-ng
Wardriving
Hak5 Plunder Bug
CATT
Canary token links
Summary
LAB
Google Hacking
Part 1: Hacking personal information
Part 2: Hacking Servers
References
Compromising the System
Analyzing current trends
Extortion attacks
Data manipulation attacks
IoT device attacks
Backdoors
Mobile device attacks
Hacking everyday devices
Hacking the cloud
The appeal of cloud attacks
Cloud Hacking Tools
CloudTracker
OWASP DevSlop Tool
Cloud security recommendations
Phishing
Exploiting a vulnerability
Hot Potato
Zero-day
WhatsApp vulnerability (CVE-2019-3568)
Chrome zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2019-5786)
Windows 10 Privilege escalation
Windows privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE20191132)
Fuzzing
Source code analysis
Types of zero-day exploits
Buffer overflows
Structured exception handler overwrites
Performing the steps to compromise a system
Deploying payloads
Installing and using a vulnerability scanner
Using Metasploit
Compromising operating systems
Compromising a remote system
Compromising web-based systems
Mobile phone (iOS / Android attacks)
Exodus
SensorID
iPhone hack by Cellebrite
Man-in-the-disk
Spearphone (loudspeaker data capture on Android)
Tap n Ghost
Red and Blue Team Tools for Mobile Devices
Snoopdroid
Androguard
Frida
Cycript
iOS Implant Teardown
Lab
Building a Red Team PC in Windows
Lab 2: Hack those websites (legally!)
bWAPP
HackThis!!
OWASP Juice Shop Project
Try2Hack
Google Gruyere
Damn Vulnerable Web Application (DVWA)
Summary
References
Further reading
Chasing a User's Identity
Identity is the new perimeter
Strategies for compromising a user's identity
Gaining access to the network
Harvesting credentials
Hacking a user's identity
Brute force
Social engineering
Pass the hash
Identity theft through mobile devices
Other methods for hacking an identity
Summary
References
Lateral Movement
Infiltration
Network mapping
Avoiding alerts
Performing lateral movement
Think like a Hacker
Port scans
Sysinternals
File shares
Windows DCOM
Remote Desktop
PowerShell
Windows Management Instrumentation
Scheduled tasks
Token stealing
Stolen credentials
Removable media
Tainted Shared Content
Remote Registry
TeamViewer
Application deployment
Network Sniffing
ARP spoofing
AppleScript and IPC (OS X)
Breached host analysis
Central administrator consoles
Email pillaging
Active Directory
Admin shares
Pass the ticket
Pass the hash (PtH)
Winlogon
Lsass.exe Process
Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database
Domain Active Directory Database (NTDS.DIT):
Credential Manager (CredMan) store:
PtH Mitigation Recommendations
Lab
Hunting Malware without antivirus
Summary
References
Further reading
Privilege Escalation
Infiltration
Horizontal Privilege Escalation
Vertical Privilege Escalation
Avoiding alerts
Performing Privilege Escalation
Exploiting unpatched operating systems
Access token manipulation
Exploiting accessibility features
Application shimming
Bypassing user account control
DLL injection
DLL search order hijacking
Dylib hijacking
Exploration of vulnerabilities
Launch daemon
Hands-on example of Privilege Escalation on a Windows target
Privilege escalation techniques
Dumping the SAM file
Rooting Android
Using the /etc/passwd file
Extra window memory injection
Hooking
New services
Scheduled tasks
Windows Boot Sequence
Startup items
Startup 101
Sudo caching
Additional tools for privilege escalation
0xsp Mongoose v1.7
Conclusion and lessons learned
Summary
Lab 1
Lab 2
Part 1 – Retrieving passwords from LSASS
Part 2 – Dumping Hashes with PowerSploit
Lab 3: HackTheBox
References
Security Policy
Reviewing your security policy
Educating the end user
Social media security guidelines for users
Security awareness training
Policy enforcement
Application whitelisting
Hardening
Monitoring for compliance
Continuously driving security posture enhancement via security policy
Summary
References
Network Segmentation
The defense in depth approach
Infrastructure and services
Documents in transit
Endpoints
Physical network segmentation
Discovering your network
Securing remote access to the network
Site-to-site VPN
Virtual network segmentation
Zero trust network
Planning zero trust network adoption
Hybrid cloud network security
Cloud network visibility
Summary
Ref
Active Sensors
Detection capabilities
Indicators of compromise
Intrusion detection systems
Intrusion prevention system
Rule-based detection
Anomaly-based detection
Behavior analytics on-premises
Device placement
Behavior analytics in a hybrid cloud
Azure Security Center
Analytics for PaaS workloads
Summary
References
Threat Intelligence
Introduction to threat intelligence
Open source tools for threat intelligence
Free threat intelligence feeds
Microsoft threat intelligence
Azure Sentinel
Leveraging threat intelligence to investigate suspicious activity
Summary
References
Investigating an Incident
Scoping the issue
Key artifacts
Investigating a compromised system on-premises
Investigating a compromised system in a hybrid cloud
Integrating Azure Security Center with your SIEM for Investigation
Proactive investigation (threat hunting)
Lessons learned
Summary
References
Recovery Process
Disaster recovery plan
The disaster recovery planning process
Forming a disaster recovery team
Performing risk assessment
Prioritizing processes and operations
Determining recovery strategies
Collecting data
Creating the DR plan
Testing the plan
Obtaining approval
Maintaining the plan
Challenges
Contingency planning
IT contingency planning process
Development of the contingency planning policy
Conducting business impact analysis
Identifying the preventive controls
Business continuity vs Disaster recovery
Developing recovery strategies
Live recovery
Plan maintenance
Cyber Incident Recovery Examples from the field
Risk management tools
RiskNAV
IT Risk Management App
Best practices for recovery planning
Disaster recovery best practices
On-Premises
On the cloud
Hybrid
Cyber-resilient recommendations
Summary
Resources for DR Planning
References
Further reading
Vulnerability Management
Creating a vulnerability management strategy
Asset inventory
Information management
Risk assessment
Scope
Collecting data
Analysis of policies and procedures
Vulnerability analysis
Threat analysis
Analysis of acceptable risks
Vulnerability assessment
Reporting and remediation tracking
Response planning
Vulnerability management tools
Asset inventory tools
Peregrine tools
LANDesk Management Suite
StillSecure
McAfee's Enterprise
Information management tools
Risk assessment tools
Vulnerability assessment tools
Reporting and remediation tracking tools
Response planning tools
Implementation of vulnerability management
Best practices for vulnerability management
Vulnerability management tools
Intruder
Patch Manager Plus
InsightVM
Azure Threat & Vulnerability Management
Implementing vulnerability management with Nessus
OpenVAS
Qualys
Acunetix
LABS
Lab 1: Performing an online vulnerability scan with Acunetix
Lab 2: Network security scan with GFI LanGuard
Summary
References
Log Analysis
Data correlation
Operating system logs
Windows logs
Linux logs
Firewall logs
Web server logs
Amazon Web Services (AWS) logs
Accessing AWS logs from Azure Sentinel
Azure Activity logs
Accessing Azure Activity logs from Azure Sentinel
Summary
References
Other Books You May Enjoy
Index
Preface
With a threat landscape that it is in constant motion, it becomes imperative to have a strong security posture, which in reality means enhancing the protection, detection, and response. Throughout this book, you will learn about attack methods and patterns to recognize abnormal behavior within your organization with Blue Team tactics. You will also learn techniques to gather exploitation intelligence, identify risks, and demonstrate impact on Red and Blue Team strategies.
Who this book is for
For the IT professional venturing into the IT security domain, IT pentesters, security consultants, or those looking to perform ethical hacking. Prior knowledge of penetration testing is beneficial.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Security Posture, defines what constitutes a secure posture and how it helps in understanding the importance of having a good defense and attack strategy.
Chapter 2, Incident Response Process, introduces the incident response process and the importance of having one. It goes over different industry standards and best practices for handling incident response.
Chapter 3, What is a Cyber Strategy?, explains what a cyber strategy is, why it's needed, and how an effective enterprise cyber strategy can be built.
Chapter 4, Understanding the Cybersecurity Kill Chain, prepares the reader to understand the mindset of an attacker, the different stages of the attack, and what usually takes place in each one of those phases.
Chapter 5, Reconnaissance, speaks about the different strategies to perform reconnaissance and how data is gathered to obtain information about the target for planning the attack.
Chapter 6, Compromising the System, shows current trends in strategies to compromise a system and explains how to compromise a system.
Chapter 7, Chasing a User's Identity, explains the importance of protecting the user's identity to avoid credential theft and goes through the process of hacking the user's identity.
Chapter 8, Lateral Movement, describes how attackers perform lateral movement once they compromise a system.
Chapter 9, Privilege Escalation, shows how attackers can escalate privileges in order to gain administrative access to a network system.
Chapter 10, Security Policy, focuses on the different aspects of the initial defense strategy, which starts with the importance of a well-crafted security policy and goes over the best practices for security policies, standards, security awareness training, and core security controls.
Chapter 11, Network Segmentation, looks into different aspects of defense in depth, covering physical network segmentation as well as the virtual and hybrid cloud.
Chapter 12, Active Sensors, details different types of network sensors that help the organizations to detect attacks.
Chapter 13, Threat Intelligence, speaks about the different aspects of threat intelligence from the community as well as from the major vendors.
Chapter 14, Investigating an Incident, goes over two case studies, for an on-premises compromised system and for a cloud-based compromised system, and shows all the steps involved in a security investigation.
Chapter 15, Recovery Process, focuses on the recovery process of a compromised system and explains how crucial it is to know all the options that are available since live recovery of a system is not possible in certain circumstances.
Chapter 16, Vulnerability Management, describes the importance of vulnerability management to mitigate vulnerability exploitation. It covers the current threat landscape and the growing number of ransomwares that exploit known vulnerabilities.
Chapter 17, Log Analysis, goes over the different techniques for manual log analysis since it is critical for the reader to gain knowledge on how to deeply analyze different types of logs to hunt suspicious security activities.
To get the most out of this book
We assume that the readers of this book know the basic information security concepts and are familiar with Windows and Linux operating systems.Some of the demonstrations from this book can also be done in a lab environment; therefore, we recommend that you have a virtual lab with the following VMs: Windows Server 2012, Windows 10, and Kali Linux.Download the color images
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://static.packt-cdn.com/downloads/9781838827793_ColorImages.pdf.
Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. For example; " You can use the agent.exe-h command to get help about the possible command options."
A block of code is set as follows:
Log Name: Security Source: Microsoft-Windows-Security-Auditing. Event ID: 4688 Task Category: Process CreationAny command-line input or output is written as follows:
Invoke-WebRequest-Uri "https://github.com/gentilkiwi/mimikatz/releases/download/2.1.1-20170813/mimikatz_trunk.zip"-OutFile "C:tempmimikatz_trunk.zip"Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, also appear in the text like this. For example: "In an incident response process, the roles and responsibilities are critical. Without the proper level of authority, the entire process is at risk."
Warnings or important notes appear like this.
Tips and tricks appear like this.
Get in touch
Feedback from our readers is always welcome.
General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, mention the book title in the subject of your message and email us at [email protected].
Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit, http://www.packt.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details.
Piracy: If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, we would be grateful if you would provide us with the location address or website name. Please contact us at [email protected] with a link to the material.
If you are interested in becoming an author: If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, please visit http://authors.packtpub.com.
Reviews
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For more information about Packt, please visit packt.com.
1
Security Posture
Over the years, the investments in security moved from nice to have to must have, and now organizations around the globe are realizing how important it is to continually invest in security. This investment will ensure that a company remains competitive in the market. Failure to properly secure their assets could lead to irreparable damage, and in some circumstances could lead to bankruptcy. Due to the current threat landscape, investing in protection alone isn't enough. Organizations must enhance their overall security posture. This means that the investments in protection, detection, and response must be aligned. In this chapter, we'll be covering the following topics:
The current threat landscapeThe challenges in the cybersecurity space How to enhance your security postureUnderstanding the roles of the Blue Team and Red Team in your organizationThe current threat landscape
With the prevalence of always-on connectivity and advancements in technology that is available today, threats are evolving rapidly to exploit different aspects of these technologies. Any device is vulnerable to attack, and with Internet of Things (IoT) this became a reality. In October 2016, a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were launched against DNS servers, which caused some major web services to stop working, such as GitHub, PayPal, Spotify, Twitter, and others [1]. Attacks leveraging IoT devices are growing exponentially, according to SonicWall, 32.7 million IoT attacks having been detected during the year of 2018. One of these attacks was the VPNFilter malware.
This malware was leveraged during an IoT related attack to infect routers and capture and exfiltrate data.
This was possible due to the amount of insecure IoT devices around the world. While the use of IoT to launch a massive cyber attack is something new, the vulnerabilities in those devices are not. As a matter of fact, they've been there for quite a while. In 2014, ESET reported 73,000 unprotected security cameras with default passwords [2]. In April 2017, IOActive found 7,000 vulnerable Linksys routers in use, although they said that it could be up to 100,000 additional routers exposed to this vulnerability [3].
The Chief Executive Officer(CEO) may even ask: what do the vulnerabilities in a home device have to do with our company? That's when the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) should be ready to give an answer. Because the CISO should have a better understanding of the threat landscape and how home user devices may impact the overall security that this company needs to enforce. The answer comes in two simple scenarios, remote access and bring your own device (BYOD).
While remote access is not something new, the number of remote workers is growing exponentially. Forty-three percent of employed Americans report spending at least some time working remotely, according to Gallup [4], which means they are using their own infrastructure to access a company's resources. Compounding this issue, we have a growth in the number of companies allowing BYOD in the workplace. Keep in mind that there are ways to implement BYOD securely, but most of the failures in the BYOD scenario usually happen because of poor planning and network architecture, which lead to an insecure implementation [5].
What is the commonality among all the technologies that were previously mentioned? To operate them you need a user, and the user is still the greatest target for attack. Humans are the weakest link in the security chain. For this reason, old threats such as phishing emails are still on the rise. This is because they deal with the psychological aspects of the user by enticing the user to click on something, such as a file attachment or malicious link. Once the user performs one of these actions, their device usually either becomes compromised by malicious software (malware) or is remotely accessed by a hacker. In April 2019 the IT services company Wipro Ltd was initially compromised by a phishing campaign, which was used as an initial footprint for a major attack that led to a data breach of many customers. This just shows how effective a phishing campaign can still be, even with all security controls in place.
The phishing campaign is usually used as the entry point for the attacker, and from there other threats will be leveraged to exploit vulnerabilities in the system.
One example of a growing threat that uses phishing emails as the entry point for the attack is ransomware. Only during the first three months of 2016, the FBI reported that $209 million in ransomware payments were made [6]. According to Trend Micro, ransomware growth will plateau in 2017; however, the attack methods and targets will diversify [7].
The following diagram highlights the correlation between these attacks and the end user:
Figure 1: Correlation between attacks and the end user
This diagram shows four entry points for the end user. All of these entry points must have their risks identified and treated with proper controls. The scenarios are listed here:
Connectivity between on-premises and cloud (entry point 1)Connectivity between BYOD devices and cloud (entry point 2)Connectivity between corporate-owned devices and on-premises (entry point 3) Connectivity between personal devices and cloud (entry point 4)Notice that these are different scenarios, but all correlated by one single entity: the end user. The common element in all scenarios is usually the preferred target for cybercriminals, which appears in the preceding diagram accessing cloud resources.
In all scenarios, there is also another important element that appears constantly, which is cloud computing resources. The reality is that nowadays you can't ignore the fact that many companies are adopting cloud computing. The vast majority will start in a hybrid scenario, where infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is their main cloud service. Some other companies might opt to use software as a service (SaaS) for some solutions. For example, mobile device management (MDM), as shown in entry point 2. You may argue that highly secure organizations, such as the military, may have zero cloud connectivity. That's certainly possible, but commercially speaking, cloud adoption is growing and will slowly dominate most deployment scenarios.
On-premises security is critical, because it is the core of the company, and that's where the majority of the users will be accessing resources. When an organization decides to extend their on-premises infrastructure with a cloud provider to use IaaS (entry point 1), the company needs to evaluate the threats for this connection and the countermeasure for these threats through a risk assessment.
The last scenario description (entry point 4) might be intriguing for some skeptical analysts, mainly because they might not immediately see how this scenario has any correlation with the company's resources. Yes, this is a personal device with no direct connectivity with on-premise resources. However, if this device is compromised, the user could potentially compromise the company's data in the following situations:
Opening a corporate email from this deviceAccessing corporate SaaS applications from this deviceIf the user uses the same password [8] for his/her personal email and his/her corporate account, this could lead to account compromise through brute force or password guessingHaving technical security controls in place could help mitigate some of these threats against the end user. However, the main protection is continuous use of education via security awareness training.
The user is going to use their credentials to interact with applications in order to either consume data or write data to servers located in the cloud or on-premise. Everything in bold has a unique threat landscape that must be identified and treated. We will cover these areas in the sections that follow.
The credentials – authentication and authorization
According to Verizon's 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report [9], the association between threat actor (or just actor), their motives, and their modus operandi vary according to the industry. However, the report states that stolen credentials are the preferred attack vector for financial motivation or organized crime. This data is very important, because it shows that threat actors are going after user's credentials, which leads to the conclusion that companies must focus specifically on authentication and authorization of users and their access rights.
The industry has agreed that a user's identity is the new perimeter. This requires security controls specifically designed to authenticate and authorize individuals based on their job and need for specific data within the network. Credential theft could be just the first step to enable cybercriminals to have access to your system. Having a valid user account in the network will enable them to move laterally (pivot), and at some point find the right opportunity to escalate privilege to a domain administrator account. For this reason, applying the old concept of defense in depth is still a good strategy to protect a user's identity, as shown in the following diagram:
Figure 2: Multi-layer protection for identity
In the previous diagram there are multiple layers of protection, starting with the regular security policy enforcement for accounts, which follow industry best practices such as strong password requirements, including frequent password changes and high password strength.
Another growing trend to protect user identities is to enforce MFA. One method that is seeing increased adoption is the callback feature, where the user initially authenticates using his/her credentials (username and password), and receives a call to enter their PIN. If both authentication factors succeed, they are authorized to access the system or network. We are going to explore this topic in greater detail in Chapter 7, Chasing a User's Identity. Another important layer is continuous monitoring, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter having all layers of security controls if you are not actively monitoring your identity to understand the normal behavior, and identify suspicious activities. We will cover this in more detail in Chapter 12, Active Sensors.
Apps
Applications (we will call them apps from now on) are the entry point for the user to consume data and to transmit, process, or store information onto the system. Apps are evolving rapidly, and the adoption of SaaS-based apps is on the rise. However, there are inherited problems with this amalgamation of apps. Here are two key examples:
Security: How secure are these apps that are being developed in-house and the ones that you are paying for as a service?Company-owned versus personal apps: Users will have their own set of apps on their own devices (BYOD scenario). How do these apps jeopardize the company's security posture, and can they lead to a potential data breach?If you have a team of developers that are building apps in-house, measures should be taken to ensure that they are using a secure framework throughout the software development lifecycle, such as the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) [10]. If you are going to use a SaaS app, such as Office 365, you need to make sure you read the vendor's security and compliance policy [11]. The intent here is to see if the vendor and the SaaS app are able to meet your company's security and compliance requirements.
Another security challenge facing apps is how the company's data is handled among different apps, the ones used and approved by the company and the ones used by the end user (personal apps).
This problem becomes even more critical with SaaS, where users are consuming many apps that may not be secure. The traditional network security approach to support apps is not designed to protect data in SaaS apps, and worse, they don't give IT the visibility they need to know how employees are using them. This scenario is also called Shadow IT, and according to a survey conducted by Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) [12], only 8 percent of companies know the scope of Shadow IT within their organizations. You can't protect something you don't know you have, and this is a dangerous place to be.
According to Kaspersky Global IT Risk Report 2016 [13], 54 percent of businesses perceive that the main IT security threats are related to inappropriate sharing of data via mobile devices. It is necessary for IT to gain control of the apps and enforce security policies across devices (company-owned and BYOD). One of the key scenarios that you want to mitigate is the one described in the following diagram:
Figure 3: BYOD scenario with corporate app approval isolation
In this scenario, we have the user's personal tablet that has approved applications as well as personal apps. Without a platform that can integrate device management with application management, this company is exposed to a potential data leakage scenario.
In this case, if the user downloads the Excel spreadsheet onto his/her device, then uploads it to a personal Dropbox cloud storage and the spreadsheet contains the company's confidential information, the user has now created a data leak without the company's knowledge or the ability to secure it.
Data
We finished the previous section talking about data. It's always important to ensure that data is protected, regardless of its current state (in transit or at rest). There will be different threats according to the data's state. The following are some examples of potential threats and countermeasures:
StateDescriptionThreatsCountermeasuresSecurity triad affectedData at rest on the user's device.
The data is currently located on the user's device.
The unauthorized or malicious process could read or modify the data.
Data encryption at rest. It could be file-level encryption or disk encryption.
Confidentiality and integrity.
Data in transit.
The data is currently being transferred from one host to another.
A man-in-the- middle attack could read, modify, or hijack the data.
SSL/TLS could be used to encrypt the data in transit.
Confidentiality and integrity.
Data at rest on-premise (server) or in the cloud.
The data is located at rest either on the server's hard drive located on-premise or in the cloud (storage pool).
Unauthorized or malicious processes could read or modify the data.
Data encryption at rest. It could be file-level encryption or disk encryption.
Confidentiality and integrity.
These are only some examples of potential threats and suggested countermeasures. A deeper analysis must be performed to fully understand the data path according to the customer's needs. Each customer will have their own particularities regarding data path, compliance, rules, and regulations. It is critical to understand these requirements even before the project is started.
Cybersecurity challenges
To analyze the cybersecurity challenges faced by companies nowadays, it is necessary to obtain tangible data, and evidence of what's currently happening in the market. Not all industries will have the same type of cybersecurity challenges, and for this reason we will enumerate the threats that are still the most prevalent across different industries. This seems to be the most appropriate approach for cybersecurity analysts that are not specialized in certain industries, but at some point in their career they might need to deal with a certain industry that they are not so familiar with.
Old techniques and broader results
According to Kaspersky Global IT Risk Report 2016 [14], the top causes for the most costly data breaches are based on old attacks that are evolving over time, which are in the following order:
Viruses, malware, and TrojansLack of diligence and untrained employeesPhishing and social engineeringTargeted attackCrypto and ransomwareAlthough the top three in this list are old suspects and very well-known attacks in the cybersecurity community, they are still succeeding, and for this reason they are still part of the current cybersecurity challenges. The real problem with the top three is that they are usually correlated to human error. As explained before, everything may start with a phishing email that uses social engineering to lead the employee to click on a link that may download a virus, malware, or Trojan.
The term targeted attack (or advanced persistent threat) is sometimes unclear to some individuals, but there are some key attributes that can help you identify when this type of attack is taking place. The first and most important attribute is that the attacker has a specific target in mind when he/she/they (sometimes they are sponsored groups) starts to create a plan of attack. During this initial phase, the attacker will spend a lot of time and resources to perform public reconnaissance to obtain the necessary information to carry out the attack. The motivation behind this attack is usually data exfiltration, in other words, stealing data. Another attribute for this type of attack is the longevity, or the amount of time that they maintain persistent access to the target's network. The intent is to continue moving laterally across the network, compromising different systems until the goal is reached.
One of the greatest challenges in this area is to identify the attacker once they are already inside the network. The traditional detection systems such as intrusion detection systems (IDS) may not be enough to alert on suspicious activity taking place, especially when the traffic is encrypted. Many researchers already pointed out that it can take up to 229 days between infiltration and detection [15]. Reducing this gap is definitely one of the greatest challenges for cybersecurity professionals.
Crypto and ransomware are emerging and growing threats that are creating a whole new level of challenge for organizations and cybersecurity professionals. In May 2017, the world was shocked by the biggest ransomware attack in history, called WannaCry. This ransomware exploited a known Windows SMBv1 vulnerability that had a patch released in March 2017 (59 days prior to the attack) via the MS17-010 [16] bulletin. The attackers used an exploit called EternalBlue that was released in April 2017, by a hacking group called The Shadow Brokers. According to MalwareTech [18], this ransomware infected more than 400,000 machines across the globe, which is a gigantic number, never seen before in this type of attack. One lesson learned from this attack was that companies across the world are still failing to implement an effective vulnerability management program, which is something we will cover in more detail in Chapter 16, Vulnerability Management.
It is very important to mention that phishing emails are still the number one delivery vehicle for ransomware, which means that we are going back to the same cycle again; educate the user to reduce the likelihood of successful exploitation of the human factor via social engineering, and have tight technical security controls in place to protect and detect.
The shift in the threat landscape
In 2016, a new wave of attacks also gained mainstream visibility, when CrowdStrike reported that it had identified two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the United States Democratic National Committee (DNC) network [19].
According to their report, they found evidence that two Russian hacking groups were in the DNC network: Cozy Bear (also classified as APT29) and Fancy Bear (APT28). Cozy Bear was not a new actor in this type of attack, since evidence has shown that in 2015 [20] they were behind the attack against the Pentagon email system via spear phishing attacks.
This type of scenario is called a Government-sponsored or state-sponsored cyber-attack, but some specialists prefer to be more general and call it data as a weapon, since the intent is to steal information that can be used against the hacked party.
The private sector should not ignore these signs. According to a report released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, financial institutions are becoming the main target for state-sponsored attack. In February 2019 multiple credit unions in the United States were targets of a spear-phishing campaign, where emails were sent to compliance officers in these credit unions with a PDF (which came back clean when ran through VirusTotal at that time), but the body of the email contained a link to a malicious website. Although the threat actor is still unknown, there are speculations that this was just another state-sponsored attack. It is important to mention that the US is not the only target; the entire global financial sector is at risk. In March 2019 the Ursnif malware hit Japanese banks. Palo Alto released a detailed analysis of the Ursnif infection vector in Japan, which can be summarized in two major phases:
The victim receives a phishing email with an attachment. Once the user opens up the email, the system gets infected with Shiotob (also known as Bebloh or URLZone).Once in the system, Shiotob starts the communication with the command and control (C2) using HTTPS. From that point on, it will keep receiving new commands.For this reason, it is so important to ensure that you have continuous security monitoring that is able to leverage at least the three methods shown in the following diagram:
Figure 4: Continuous security monitoring, facilitated by traditional alert systems, behavioral analysis, and machine learning
This is just one of the reasons that it is becoming foundational that organizations start to invest more in threat intelligence, machine learning, and analytics to protect their assets. We will cover this in more detail in Chapter 13, Threat Intelligence. Having said that, let's also realize that detection is only one piece of the puzzle; you need to be diligent and ensure that your organization is secure by default, in other words, that you've done your homework and protect your assets, trained your people and continuously enhance your security posture.
Enhancing your security posture
If you carefully read this entire chapter, it should be very clear that you can't use the old approach to security facing today's challenges and threats. When we say old approach, we are referring to how security used to be handled in the early 2000s, where the only concern was to have a good firewall to protect the perimeter and have antivirus on the endpoints. For this reason, it is important to ensure that your security posture is prepared to deal with these challenges. To accomplish this you must solidify your current protection system across different devices, regardless of the form factor.
It is also important to enable IT and security operations to quickly identify an attack, by enhancing the detection system. Last but certainly not least, it is necessary to reduce the time between infection and containment by rapidly responding to an attack by enhancing the effectiveness of the response process. Based on this, we can safely say that the security posture is composed of three foundational pillars as shown in the following diagram:
Figure 5: The three pillars of an effective security posture: Protection, Detection, and Response
These pillars must be solidified; if in the past the majority of the budget was put into protection, nowadays it's even more imperative to spread that investment and level of effort across all pillars. These investments are not exclusively in technical security controls; they must also be done in the other spheres of the business, which includes administrative controls. It is recommended to perform a self-assessment to identify the weaknesses within each pillar from the tool perspective. Many companies evolved over time and never really updated their security tools to accommodate the new threat landscape and how attackers are exploiting vulnerabilities.
A company with an enhanced security posture shouldn't be part of the statistics that were previously mentioned (229 days between the infiltration and detection); the response should be almost immediate. To accomplish this, a better incident response process must be in place, with modern tools that can help security engineers to investigate security-related issues. Chapter 2, Incident Response Process, will cover incident response in more detail and Chapter 14, Investigating an Incident, will cover some case studies related to actual security investigations.
Cloud Security Posture Management
When companies start to migrate to the cloud, their challenge to keep up with their security posture increases, since the threat landscape changes due to the new workloads that are introduced. According to the 2018 Global Cloud Data Security Study conducted by Ponemon Institute LLC (January 2018), forty nine percent of the respondents in the United States are "not confident that their organizations have visibility into the use of cloud computing applications, platform or infrastructure services." According to Palo Alto 2018 Cloud Security Report (May 2018), sixty two percent of the respondents said that misconfiguration of cloud platforms is the biggest threat to cloud security. From these statistics we can clearly see a lack of visibility and control over different cloud workloads, which not only cause challenges during the adoption, but it also slows down the migration to the cloud. In large organizations the problem becomes even more difficult due the dispersed cloud adoption strategy. This usually occurs because different departments within a company will lead their own way to the cloud, from the billing to infrastructure perspective. By the time Security and Operations Team becomes aware of those isolated cloud adoptions, these departments are already using applications in production and integrated with the corporate on-premises network.
To obtain the proper level of visibility across your cloud workloads, you can't rely only in a well-documented set of processes, you must also have the right set of tools. According to Palo Alto 2018 Cloud Security Report (May 2018), eighty four percent of the respondents said that "traditional security solutions either don't work at all or have limited functionality." This leads to a conclusion that, ideally, you should evaluate your cloud's provider native cloud security tools before even start moving to the cloud. However, many current scenarios are far from the ideal, which means you need to evaluate the cloud provider's security tools while the workloads are already on it.
When talking about cloud security posture management (CSPM), we are basically referring to three major capabilities: visibility, monitoring, and compliance assurance.
A CSPM tool should be able to look across all these pillars and provide capabilities to discover new and existing workloads (ideally across different cloud providers), identify misconfigurations and provide recommendations to enhance the security posture of cloud workloads, and assess cloud workloads to compare against regulatory standards and benchmarks. The table following has general considerations for a CSPM solution:
CapabilityConsiderationsCompliance assessment
Make sure the CSPM is covering the regulatory standards used by your company.
Operational monitoring
Ensure that you have visibility throughout the workloads, and that best practices recommendations are provided
DevSecOps integration
Make sure it is possible to integrate this tool in to existing workflows and orchestration. If it is not, evaluate the available options to automate and orchestrate the tasks that are critical for DevSecOps.
Risk identification
How is the CSPM tool identifying risks and driving your workloads to be more secure? This is an important question to answer when evaluating this capability.
Policy enforcement
Ensure that it is possible to establish a central policy management for your cloud workloads and that you can customize it and enforce it.
Threat protection
How do you know if there are active threats in your cloud workloads? When evaluating the threat protection capability for CSPM, it is imperative that you can not only protect (proactive work) but also detect (reactive work) threats.
The Red and Blue Teams
The Red/Blue Team exercise is not something new. The original concept was introduced a long time ago during World War I and like many terms used in information security, originated in the military. The general idea was to demonstrate the effectiveness of an attack through simulations.
For example, in 1932 Rear Admiral Harry E. Yarnell demonstrated the efficacy of an attack on Pearl Harbor. Nine years later, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, it was possible to compare and see how similar tactics were used [22].The effectiveness of simulations based on real tactics that might be used by the adversary is well known in the military. The University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies has specialized courses just to prepare Red Team participants and leaders [23].
Although the concept of "red team" in the military is broader, the intelligence support via threat emulation is similar to what a cybersecurity Red Team is trying to accomplish. The Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) [24] also uses red teaming in prevention exercises to track how adversaries move and create countermeasures based on the outcome of these exercises.
In the cybersecurity field, the adoption of the Red Team approach also helped organizations to keep their assets more secure. The Red Team must be composed of highly trained individuals with different skill sets and they must be fully aware of the current threat landscape for the organization's industry. The Red Team must be aware of trends and understand how current attacks are taking place. In some circumstances and depending on the organization's requirements, members of the Red Team must have coding skills to create their own exploit and customize it to better exploit relevant vulnerabilities that could affect the organization. The core Red Team workflow takes place using the following approach:
Figure 6: Red Team core workflow
The Red Team will perform an attack and penetrate the environment in order to find vulnerabilities. The intent of the mission is to find vulnerabilities and exploit them in order to gain access to the company's assets. The attack and penetration phase usually follows the Lockheed Martin approach, published in the paper Intelligence-Driven Computer Network Defense Informed by Analysis of Adversary Campaigns and Intrusion Kill Chains [25]. We will discuss the kill chain in more detail in Chapter 3, What is a Cyber Strategy?.
The Red Team is also accountable to register their core metrics, which are very important for the business. The main metrics are as follows:
Mean time to compromise (MTTC): This starts counting from the minute that the Red Team initiated the attack to the moment that they were able to successfully compromise the targetMean time to privilege escalation (MTTP): This starts at the same point as the previous metric, but goes all the way to full compromise, which is the moment that the Red Team has administrative privilege on the targetSo far, we've discussed the capacity of the Red Team, but the exercise is not complete without the counter partner, the Blue Team. The Blue Team needs to ensure that the assets are secure and if the Red Team finds a vulnerability and exploits it, they need to rapidly remediate and document it as part of the lessons learned.
The following are some examples of tasks done by the Blue Team when an adversary (in this case the Red Team) is able to breach the system:
Save evidence: It is imperative to save evidence during these incidents to ensure you have tangible information to analyze, rationalize, and take action to mitigate in the future.Validate the evidence: Not every single alert, or in this case piece of evidence, will lead you to a valid attempt to breach the system. But if it does, it needs to be cataloged as an indicator of compromise (IOC).Engage whoever it is necessary to engage: At this point, the Blue Team must know what to do with this IOC, and which team should be aware of this compromise. Engage all relevant teams, which may vary according to the organization.Triage the incident: Sometimes the Blue Team may need to engage law enforcement, or they may need a warrant in order to perform the further investigation, a proper triage to assess the case and identify who should handle it moving forward will help in this process.Scope the breach: At this point, the Blue Team has enough information to scope the breach.Create a remediation plan: The Blue Team should put together a remediation plan to either isolate or evict the adversary.Execute the plan: Once the plan is finished, the Blue Team needs to execute it and recover from the breach.The Blue Team members should also have a wide variety of skill sets and should be composed of professionals from different departments. Keep in mind that some companies do have a dedicated Red/Blue Team, while others do not. Companies put these teams together only during exercises. Just like the Red Team, the Blue Team also has accountability for some security metrics, which in this case is not 100% precise. The reason the metrics are not precise is that the true reality is that the Blue Team might not know precisely what time the Red Team was able to compromise the system. Having said that, the estimation is already good enough for this type of exercise. These estimations are self-explanatory as you can see in the following list:
Estimated time to detection(ETTD)Estimated time to recovery(ETTR)The Blue Team and the Red Team's work doesn't finish when the Red Team is able to compromise the system. There is a lot more to do at this point, which will require full collaboration among these teams. A final report must be created to highlight the details regarding how the breach occurred, provide a documented timeline of the attack, the details of the vulnerabilities that were exploited in order to gain access and to elevate privileges (if applicable), and the business impact to the company.
Assume breach
Due to the emerging threats and cyber security challenges, it was necessary to change the methodology from prevent breach to assume breach. The traditional prevent breach approach by itself does not promote the ongoing testing, and to deal with modern threats you must always be refining your protection. For this reason, the adoption of this model to the cybersecurity field was a natural move.
When the former director of the CIA and National Security Agency Retired Gen. Michael Hayden said in 2012 [26]:
"Fundamentally, if somebody wants to get in, they're getting in. Alright, good. Accept that."During an interview, many people didn't quite understand what he really meant, but this sentence is the core of the assume breach approach. Assume breach validates the protection, detection, and response to ensure they are implemented correctly. But to operationalize this, it becomes vital that you leverage Red/Blue Team exercises to simulate attacks against its own infrastructure and test the company's security controls, sensors, and incident-response process.
In the following diagram, you have an example of the interaction between phases in the Red Team/Blue Team exercise:
Figure 7: Red Team and Blue Team interactions in a Red Team/Blue Team exercise
The preceding diagram shows an example of the Red Team starting the attack simulation, which leads to an outcome that is consumed by the Blue Team to address the vulnerabilities that were found as part of the post breach assessment.
It will be during the post breach phase that the Red and Blue Team will work together to produce the final report. It is important to emphasize that this should not be a one off exercise, instead, must be a continuous process that will be refined and improved with best practices over time.
Summary
In this chapter, you learned about the current threat landscape and how these new threats are used to compromise credentials, apps, and data. In many scenarios, old hacking techniques are used, such as phishing emails, but with a more sophisticated approach. You also learned the current reality regarding the nationwide type of threat, and government-targeted attacks. In order to protect your organization against these new threats, you learned about key factors that can help you to enhance your security posture. It is essential that part of this enhancement shifts the attention from protection only to include detection and response. For that, the use of Red and Blue Teams becomes imperative. The same concept applies to the assume breach methodology. In the next chapter, you will continue to learn about the enhancement of your security posture. However, the chapter will focus on the incident response process. The incident response process is primordial for companies that need a better detection of and response against cyber threats.
References
You can refer to the following articles:
Refer to http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/new-iot-botnet-discovered-120k-ip-cameras-at-risk-of-attack/d/d-id/1328839.Refer to https://www.welivesecurity.com/2014/11/11/website-reveals-73000-unprotected-security-cameras-default-passwords/.Refer to https://threatpost.com/20-linksys-router-models-vulnerable-to-attack/125085/.Refer to https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/remote-workers-work-from-home.html.Read the vendor-agnostic guidelines to adopt BYOD published at the ISSA Journal https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/yuridiogenes/2014/03/11/byod-article-published-at-issa-journal/.Refer to http://www.csoonline.com/article/3154714/security/ransomware-took-in-1-billion-in-2016-improved-defenses-may-not-be-enough-to-stem-the-tide.html.Refer to http://blog.trendmicro.com/ransomware-growth-will-plateau-in-2017-but-attack-methods-and-targets-will-diversify/.Read this article for more information about the dangerous aspects of using the same password for different accounts http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/bank-accounts/12149022/Use-the-same-password-for-everything-Youre-fuelling-a-surge-in-current-account-fraud.html.Download the report from http://www.verizonenterprise.com/resources/reports/rp_DBIR_2017_Report_en_xg.pdf.Read more information about SDL at https://www.microsoft.com/sdl.Microsoft Office 365 Security and Compliance can be found at https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Office-365-Security-Compliance-Center-7e696a40-b86b-4a20-afcc-559218b7b1b8.Read the entire study at https://downloads.cloudsecurityalliance.org/initiatives/surveys/capp/Cloud_Adoption_Practices_Priorities_Survey_Final.pdf.Read the full report at http://www.kasperskyreport.com/?gclid=CN_89N2b0tQCFQYuaQodAQoMYQ.You can download the report at http://www.kasperskyreport.com/?gclid=CN_89N2b0tQCFQYuaQodAQoMYQ.Refer to https://info.microsoft.com/ME-Azure-WBNR-FY16-06Jun-21-22-Microsoft-Security-Briefing-Event-Series-231990.html?ls=Social.Read the Microsoft bulletin for more information https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms17-010.aspx.Read this article for more information about this group https://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/equation-has-secretive-cyberespionage-group-been-breached.Refer to https://twitter.com/MalwareTechBlog/status/865761555190775808.Refer to https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/.Refer to http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/06/russia-hacks-pentagon-computers-nbc-citing-sources.html.Refer to https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/17/15655484/wannacry-variants-bitcoin-monero-adylkuzz-cryptocurrency-mining.Refer to https://www.quora.com/Could-the-attack-on-Pearl-Harbor-have-been-prevented-What-actions-could-the-US-have-taken-ahead-of-time-to-deter-dissuade-Japan-from-attacking#!n=12.You can download the Red Team handbook at http://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/ufmcs/The_Applied_Critical_Thinking_Handbook_v7.0.pdf.Refer to https://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1914-25045-8890/hseep_apr13_.pdf.Download the paper from https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed/data/corporate/documents/LM-White-Paper-Intel-Driven-Defense.pdf.Refer to http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-fighting-two-front-war-on-growing-enemy-cyber-espionage/.Palo Alto Report on Trojan Ursnif https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/unit42-banking-trojans-ursnif-global-distribution-networks-identified/.
