Adapting Incident Response to Meet the Threat

Jeff Schilling Director, Global Incident Response and Digital Forensics

SecureWorks

Agenda

• Why change your approach?• Do you really know your environment?• Do You really know/understand your threat?• Where to focus your efforts to respond?• Measuring success

My Press Box View

My view as the Director of the Army’s

Global Network Security Team

My view as the Director of the Dell

SecureWorks Incident Response Practice

The Dell SecureWorks Incident Response Practice• 300+ projects last year

42% of our engagements were with Medium-sized business 58% were large enterprise customers 70% of our engagements were active Incident Response 30% were proactive engagements 20% of our projects involved Advance Persistent Threat

(Targeted Threat)

• Our observations from 2012 engagements: End users still the primary targets (51% of the time) Servers and applications running second (39% of the time) 20% of our engagements involved insider threat activity

Do I need to change my approach?

Getting to “yes”• Do you rarely see the same activity on

your networks with the same success?• Do you conduct trend analysis of your

security incidents?• Have you analyzed the things you can

control and the things you can’t? People Processes Technology

• For the things you can’t control, have you calculated the risks or outcomes?

• Have you insured or transferred that risk?• Do you make adjustments to your security

controls based on trends?• Do you have a plan or playbook to

address your most common Incidents?• Do you rehearse and update these plans?

Do you really know your environment?

Which picture best describes your network?

• Do you have an updated/accurate network diagram? Are you a part of the change management process so you know when it changes?

• Have you studied your network flow to know what ports and protocols to accept and ones to deny?

• Do you validate with Pen Tests, Vulnerability Scans, Netflow Monitoring?• Do you have defined network boundaries with the Internet? • Do you Leverage Active Directory to assign risk and controls to Organizational Units?• Is “white listing” embraced in your organization?• Do you have a standard, secure image/baseline for hosts and servers?• Do you centralize your event log monitoring?• Do you limit workstation to workstation communication?

OR

Do you really know your enemy?

Categories of threat

• Phishing with Dynamite• Automated control for scale• Can be defended with good

Signature based controls• Buys trade craft• Can be sophisticated and

polymorphic• Favorite vectors

Server compromises Non-targeted phishing Web drive bys

• Smash and grab

• Playing chess• Human controlled (just for you)• Custom trade craft• Favorite vectors

Highly targeted phishing Water holing web drive bys Some server compromises

• Highly targeted efforts• Attempts to cover their tracks• Will compromise partners to get

to you• Goal is to log on, become an insider

• Fly on the wall• Hardest to detect, tries to hide

in normal activity

• Usually has elevated privileges• In most cases, assumes not

beingmonitored

• Rarely uses tradecraft: when they do, normally crawlers

• Usually has access to data that does not pertain to their job, that is what they take

• May use “close access” techniques

• Attempts to cover their tracks• Managers/HR usually not

surprised when insider is caught

May be some overlap in APT and Insider threat detection

Commodity

Threat

Categories of Intent/Motive

• Disrupt• Destroy• Deny• Revenge• Embarrass• Intimidate

• Competitive advantage • Fill in an innovation gap• Nation-state level espionage

• Steal your Money• Steal your clients

money• Identity Theft• Fraud

Hacktivists/RevengeCyber Warfare Intellectual Property Theft Crime

Pulling it all together

Threat Actor

Categories

Threat Actor

Motives

Targeted Assets Impacts Vectors Security

controls

• Commodity• Advanced

Persistent Threat

• Insider

• Crime• Hacktivism• Revenge• Intellectual

property theft• Cyber Warfare

• Cardholder Data/PII/Identity

• Core Business Processes

• Critical Infrastructure

• Intellectual Property

• Web applications

• Financial data/processes

• Executive communication

• Monetary loss• Availability• Confidentiality• Integrity• Personal harm• Reputation

• Botnets• Server

compromise• DoS• Malicious code• Web infection• Phishing• Physical

Theft/Loss/Damage

• Targeted Attacks

• Worms/Trojans

• IPS/IDS• Firewall/Web

app FW• DDOS filtering • Web/mail

Proxy• VM inspection• Host level

controls• SIEM/Log

monitoring• Vulnerability

mgt• Access control• DLP• DRM• User actions• Policy

What should an IR plan look like?

• Base document (Policy and Guidelines, does not change very often)– Roles and responsibilities– Description of the overall process– Identification of Incident Types– Work flows– Identification of third party providers

• Playbooks/Appendix/Run Books (Procedures, constantly updated) – One for each Incident Type

› Criteria for declaring an incident › Checklist driven actions› Point of Contact Lists

– Key players on the Security team– Key players on the IT staff (if separate from the Security team)– Key decision makers outside of Security and IT– Third party providers (ISP, outside consulting, etc)

Threat Intelligence Maturity Model

Data Collection

Data Collection

Data Collection

Analysis Investigation

Synthesis

Decision Making and

Action

Analysis Investigation Synthesis

Decision Making and

Action

Decision Making and Action

Analysis Investigation

SynthesisTim

e

MaturityEnhanced from “BI Capability Maturity Model”

Feedback loop

How do you apply intelligence?

Hostile actor ID

Actor motivations

Attacker tactics Incid

en

t R

esp

on

se

Hiring practices

Data protection Bu

sin

ess

Op

era

tion

s

What does it mean?How to resist?What is the next action?

Threat Intelligence Database

Physical security

Con

text

an

d c

ou

nte

rmeasu

res

Hostile actor ID

Material threats IT S

ecu

rityIntel on tradecraft

Where to focus your Response Efforts?

Do you live on OODA Loop?

Observe Orient Decide Act

Vulnerabilities

Adversaries

YourAssets

Analysis & Classification

Counter Measure

Control and Efficacy

Malware

Risk Assessment

Counter-measure

Plan

Develop & Deploy

Counter-measures

Apply Threat Intel to control

Detect SOC Ops

Incident ResponseContain/Eradicate

The “Broken Windows” approachAnswers• Identify your “broken windows” • Establish network visibility• Segment to protect critical assets,

create security zones• Layered defensive strategy

Intelligence informed SIEM Network detection/prevention Host level detection/prevention Virtual machine detonation

• Get control of your elevated privileges, if you can

• Protect and leverage your Active Directory structure

• Whitelist your servers, protocols and ports

• Focus on SMTP and Web traffic • Talk to managers and HR about high

risk employees with elevated privileges

Questions• Where is my most important data?• Where are most of my incidents

happening?• Where am I most vulnerable?• What is (are) the worst possible

thing(s) that could happen?• Can I detect where I am most

vulnerable?• Can contain where I am most

vulnerable?• Can I see the insider threat?

How do you measure success?

Success, Failure and False metrics

Indications of Failing Trends• Increase of recurring

incidents• Increased in dwell time• Increase # of incidents

reportedby the user v. detected by SOC

• Increased number of root leveland domain compromise

• Increase number of compromised servers/web applications

• Increase in the number ofincidents involving CVE’s

• Increase of business impact ofIncident

• Increase of incidents closed where root cause is indeterminate

Indication of Successful Trends• Decrease in time between

detection and containment• Decrease in the number of

successful commodity infections

• Decrease in number of incidents that spread to multiple host

• Increase in the number of APT and Insider threat detection

• Decrease in third party reporting of incidents (FBI, USSS, partners)

• Reduction in successful Phishing

False Metrics• Increase or decrease in number of incidents• Increase or decrease in number of detections• Investment on security technology

!

Conclusion

• Analyze your environment; Know your strengths and weaknesses

• Ensure you understand the threat’s capabilities, intent and vectors

• Focus your response on your “broken windows”• Ensure you are achieving success and not reinforcing

failure in your Incident Response processes

Resources

• Dell SecureWorks Incident Response http://go.secureworks.com/incident-response

• SANS Incident Response Traininghttp://www.sans.org/course/advanced-computer-forensic-analysis-incident-response

• White Paper - Accelerating Incident Response: How Integrated Services Reduce Risk and the Impact of a Security Breach

• http://www.secureworks.com/resources/articles/featured_articles/accelerating-incident-response-reducing-risk-and-impact

• NIST Computer Security Incident Handling Guidehttp://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-61rev2/SP800-61rev2.pdf

If you suspect a security breach, contact the Dell SecureWorks Incident Response team at 877-884-1110.

Questions?