csirt-playbook
Disk Image Deception
Cisco's Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) detected a large and ongoing malspam campaign leveraging the .IMG file extension to bypass automated malware analysis tools and infect machines with a variety of Remote Access Trojans. During our investigation, we observed multiple tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that defenders can monitor for in their environments. Our incident response and security monitoring team's analysis on a suspicious phishing attack uncovered some helpful improvements in our detection capabilities and timing.
Operational Security Intelligence
Security intelligence, threat intelligence, cyber threat intelligence, or “intel” for short is a popular topic these days in the Infosec world. It seems everyone has a feed of “bad” IP addresses and hostnames they want to sell you, or share. This is an encouraging trend in that it indicates the security industry is attempting to […]
Using a “Playbook” Model to Organize Your Information Security Monitoring Strategy
CSIRT, I have a project for you. We have a big network and we’re definitely getting hacked constantly. Your group needs to develop and implement security monitoring to get our malware and hacking problem under control. If you’ve been a security engineer for more than a few years, no doubt you’ve received a directive […]
To SIEM or Not to SIEM? Part II
The Great Correlate Debate SIEMs have been pitched in the past as "correlation engines" and their special algorithms can take in volumes of logs and filter everything down to just...
To SIEM or Not to SIEM? Part I
Security information and event management systems (SIEM, or sometimes SEIM) are intended to be the glue between an organization's various security tools. Security and other event log sources export their...
Getting a Handle on Your Data
When your incident response team gets access to a new log data source, chances are that the events may not only contain an entirely different type of data, but may also be formatted differently than any log data source you already have. Having a data collection and organization standard will ease management and analysis of […]
Making Boring Logs Interesting
This post centers around the practice of logging data - data from applications, devices, and networks - and how the components of data logging can help in the identification and remediation of network events.
Big Security—Mining Mountains of Log Data to Find Bad Stuff
Your network, servers, and a horde of laptops have been hacked. You might suspect it, or you might think it’s not possible, but it’s happened already. What’s your next move? The dilemma of the “next move” is that you can only discover an attack either as it’s happening, or after it’s already happened. In most […]