Today we shifted from logs and NSM and pivoted over to the endpoint with Advance Endpoint defection (Think Endpoint Detection and Responses…aka EDR). Or for you new TLA XDR or Extended Detection Response…but that covers more than just endpoint..and is above the scope of this blog. Gee I just got started with this and I’m already going off course…ANYWHO. We also looked at how to test what your end points are able to detect with tools like atomic red team, bloodhound the labs focused on today on using blue spawn (open source EDR) with atomic red team and even our little “exploit” we created back when we tested in app locker. There was also a touch on using host based firewalls and segmented networks (even by endpoint!) and a touch about architecture and needing not just defense in depth/layer security but overlapping segments. So you know your weak points and know what coverage you have is something fails.
Like mentioned before EDR is better than your traditional normal run of the mil AV and standard endpoint defense , which isn’t super helpful (though I guess EDR is going to be coming more of a standard). EDR products look at asset holistically and looks at processes and connections, which in DFIR world, is a huge advantage because you have a the chain of events that happened on the end point which in turn can help with the whole cyber kill chain. EDR can need some tuning work depending on certain processes that are being ran by system admins. Now you have an EDR solution and want to make sure it is detecting/alerting/monitoring things. This is were threat emulation can come into play, even if you are not full on red teaming but this can be useful to see how your EDR solution is working, or even other products within your environment as well. Instead of just the normal pop a vulnerability or missing patches or everyone’s favorite miss configured services, it goes into what happens after an attacker gets access (if you think your not going to get breached, hate to share bad news, but its going to happen). This help with lateral movement, different processes that could be used to try and escalate privilege, or infect system. I was really excited to do these labs with Blue Spawn (free open source “EDR”…not useful for full prod but for testing out the tools coming up, super useful).
We discussed Caldera which is created by the folks at MITRE (aka the people who created ATT&CK), Atomic Red Team, and Blood Hound. Caldaera and Atomic Red team can on assets and if you have your EDR/End point protection services in monitoring/alerting, While Bloodhound can map how an attacker could get admin/full domain admin permissions in your network. It was great to play with Atomic Red Team (I say that as I am currently wearing one of their swag shirts) and see how it works. The one point John made is not to be afraid of running these tools, even if it borks/breaks things. It just means you are doing your job even in an IT role of you don’t have a “whoops” moment (I myself have taken down our SIEM at work…was a good time). The other point is if you were worried about back doors in these open source tools, how many back doors have been found in other products? firewalls, endpoints, networking equipment all have been found with Backdoors on them. John also mentioned that while these tools are great. Don’t focus on the ATT&CK Bingo and blocking all the ATT&CK. Attacks change and with a few changes your not detecting it and bypass. This is were the commercial offerings can come into play (like Scythe, Attack IQ) to go around the basic ATT&CK building blocks and can use customer attack methods to check what you detect.
The last section was host based Firewalls, if your not segmenting your networks, plz start. All the way down to your desktop and between subnets as pass the hash/ticket and SAT impersonations have worked. You need to assuming you are going to get compromised/pwned (for real). What is really bad, attacker persisting and being able to move laterally/ and pivoting systems. John had some good images showing different things that might not show alerts (not going to copy as an encouragement to take the course in November). You can even just use the default windows firewall, but news flash: most of your endpoint protection vendors have built in firewalls as well and can be centrally managed and are far easier to be used than the netsh advfirewall.
Remember with all of these, think about how they overlap and look for potential weak spots and look at how they can mitigated and ensure you have overlap going over the endpoint/assets to help have a good basic security architecture. I do like how John did break it down into overlaps versus the defense in depth. As normally people think firewall, IDS/NIPS, Endpoint protection but think of it like this:
I think this is super useful to think about versus the castle or other methods. We also did a quick talk on PVLAN’s were the firewall helps control access to the vlans (I need to look at this more).
Since the Nmap lab and Shodan off roading adventure is almost over, Time to get back to paying attention today to the last day. Doubly so since I am going miss an hour or so due to doctors. Thankfully some of these last topics are stuff I do with my day to day so it wont be to bad 🙂 with a hopeful bonus section on using ADHD 🙂
M0rt0n86 