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CNIT 121:
Computer
Forensics
2 IR Management Handbook
What is a Computer Security
Incident?
Examples
Goals of IR
Incident Manager
• Leads the investigation team
• Must be able to get information and request
actions quickly
• Often the CIO, CISO, or someone they directly
appoint to work on their behalf
Remediation Team Leader
• Experienced member of IT staff
• Focal point for all remediation activities,
including
• Corrective action
• Evaluating the sensitivity of stolen data
• Strategic changes that will improve the
orgqaniations security posture
Ancillary Teams
PCI-DSS
Finding IR Talent
• Cost of maintaining an IR team
• Culture of outsourcing
• Mandated by regulatory or certification
authorities
• Inexperience in investigations
• Lack of or limited in-house specialization
How to Hire IR Talent
• Finding candidates
• Already working on other IR teams
• Online IR social networking sites
• College programs in computer science,
engineering, or computer forensics
• Preferably post-graduate
How to Hire IR Talent
• Assessing the Proper Fit: Capabilities and
Qualities
• Experience in running investigations involving
technology
• Experience in performing computer forensics
examinations
• Experience in network traffic analysis
• Knowledge of applications relevant to your
organization
IR Team Member
Characteristics
Industry Certifications
• Certs requiring periodic retesting and
demonstration of continuing education
• Too many certs indicate shallowness
The Incident Response
Process
Three Main Activities
Initial Response
• Assemble the response team
• Review network-based and other readily-
available data
• Determine type of incident
• Assess potential impact
Common Tasks
Investigation
• Goal is to determine
• What happened
• How it happened
• Sometimes, who was responsible
• Simply re-imaging servers without this
knowledge is uncertain and risky
Don't Act too Quickly
• Jumping into remediation without all the facts is
risky
• Attacker may detect your remediation and dig in
deeper
• Usually better to gather more complete
information to plan a more complete
remediation action
Initial Leads
• Don't focus exclusively on malware
• Once attacker has a foothold and gathers
credentials, he no longer needs malware
• Good leads are
• Relevant to current incident
• Detailed -- with IP addresses, date & time, etc.
• Actionable - you have logs that can be followed
Indicators of Compromise
(IOC) Creation
• Working directory names
• Output file names
• Login events
• Persistence mechanisms
• IP addresses
• Domain names
• Malware network protocol signatures
IOC Formats
Example IOC
• Link Ch 2a
IOC Deployment
• Find compromises in an automated fashion with
• Enterprise IR platform
• Visual Basic scripts
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)
scripts
IOC Formats
• For network signatures, Snort rules are the
standard
• There are three IPC formats, but none has
emerged as the clear leader and an industry
standard yet
Identify Systems of Interest
• After deploying IOCs, you find "Hits"
• A match for a rule or IOC
• Review matching information to see if the hit is
valid
• Hits can be false positives
Initial Triage
• Validate
• Check time frame and other data to make sure the
matching item is relevant
• Categorize
• Assign systems to meaningful categories like
"Backdoor installed", "Access with valid credentials",
"SQL injection", "Credential harvesting", or "Data
theft"
• Prioritize
• Highest priority given to machines that offer new
investigative leads, such as a different backdoor
Preserve Evidence
• Minimize changes to a system
• Minimize interaction time with a system
• Create appropriate documentation
• Can collect evidence from a running system or
take it down for imaging
• Don't collect large volumes of data that may
never be examined
Evidence Preservation
Categories
• Live response
• Most common method
• Use an automated tool to collect standard data
from a running system
• Contains volatile and nonvolatile information
• Process list, active network connections, event
logs, a list of objects in the file system, registry
• Contents of log files and suspected malware
Evidence Preservation
Categories
• Memory collection
• Most useful when the attacker is hiding activities, such
as a rootkit, and you cannot obtain a disk image
• Useful for memory-resident malicious activity
• Not worth the bother on most systems, because
there's not enough data to answer high-level
questions
• No way to explain how malware got there, or what the
attacker has been doing
Evidence Preservation
Categories
• Forensic Disk Image
• Complete duplicate of a hard disk
• Images are large and take a long time to analyze
• Only worth it if necessary; such as when the
attacker performed many actions over a long time,
or where information is required that can't be found
elsewhere
• If no intrusion is suspected, a disk image is the
norm
Analyze Data
• Malware analysis
• Live response analysis
• Forensic examination (on disk images)
• Make a list of realistic questions to answer
• Don't allow time to be wasted here
Remediation
• Remediate when detection methods stop finding
new events ("steady state")
• Start planning remediation early in the IR
process
• There are many moving parts to any
organization
• Coordinating threat removal is not an easy task
Three Activities
Posturing
• Steps that ensure the success of remediation
• Establishing protocol
• Exchanging contact information
• Designating responsibilities
• Increasing resources
• Scheduling resources and coordinating
timelines
Tactical
• Actions to address the current incident
• Rebuilding compromised systems
• Changing passwords
• Blocking IP addresses
• Informing customers
• Making internal or public announcement
• Changing a business process
Strategic
• Long-term improvements
• May require significant changes within an
organization
Tracking Significant
Investigative Information
• Track critical information
• And share it with ancillary teams and
organization's leadership
• Incident numbering or naming system
Significant Investigative
Information
• List of evidence collected
• With date, time, source, and chain of custody
• List of affected systems
• List of files of interest
• List of accessed or stolen data
Significant Investigative
Information
• List of significant attacker activity
• List of network-based IOCs
• List of host-based IOCs
• List of compromised accounts
• List of ongoing and requested tasks for your
teams
Reporting
• Reports are fundamental deliverables for
consultants
• Periodic, formal report keep track of all the
finding and keep the investigation focused
• Writing the report helps you organize your
activities