Investigate Three

 Analysis 


In this post, I explain analysis and the associated techniques to mean at the lowest possible level a human’s ability to consume external stimulus of its near-infinite complexity and produce thoughtful and data-backed decisions.

Within our industry, we are plagued with information twisted and corrupted by entities wishing to profit, As such this is where your analysis starts as a human. At every moment at every crossroad, you must take a data point and allow it to flower into thousands of other thoughts, then you must evaluate each subsequent thought and draw a line back to “what is already” known, The further away the thought the thinner the line back to known but the greater room the flower to bloom. That is to say don’t discount radical ideas.

When presented with an alert security vendors expend significant energy into putting “options” available to the individual reviewing the alert. In general, there will never be an option you should not explore what is key is evaluating the options to what you already know (drawing the ling back) and asking yourself if is this the best possible option to go with first.

With what’s often described as low-hanging fruit those options that you can consciously recall aiding you a benefit in the past maybe the best option but were those options picked last time just because they were new or do you have documentation?


Dilemma

This dilemma will exist with all analysts as they are presented with options and avenues to explore beyond their reach and understanding or even maybe time. 





Analysis & Triage


The above screenshot of an incomplete alert page has approximately 30 different buttons or options for you to explore. You wouldn’t want to click literally every single one so how do you get to where you need to be. What do you see!



Tool Knowledge

First and foremost equip yourself with a tool and understand all its facets and features, understand when an option will work and how your expecting it to behave, options are grouped together by types as assigned by UX/UI developers so identify where those groups are to get to other options faster.


Investigative Questions

These are the queries you ask of the data you have retrieved whether this is literal data in a computer system or visualizations and graphics as part of interfaces. To begin we can start as simple as possible:

What is this alert about?

Well, the top heading on the page under the option ‘Manage Alert’ details “Possible theft of passwords and other sensitive browser information”. With this information, we know immediately the adversary is already on the system and information such as credit cards and corporate authentication information may be at risk.

We also know that browsers keep their data in sqlite databases in directories like LocalAppData\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Login Data. So Already we have have our first investigative question and a strong lead to pursue

Were there any interactions with sensitive browser locations?

If so was activity observed on any other assets?


Were further payloads delivered to the system?

We know that adversaries often rely on low-sophistication techniques to pass initial access and establish a foothold to ensure they are not prevented too early into their kill chain so other files being involved is likely. Selecting the alert within the timeline reveals other binaries



Now we have a collection of new questions to explore

What operations have the newly found files done?

What information can we gather on the IP address?

And with that, we have already established 6 investigative questions to explore further and add to your triage notes.



What makes a good investigative question?

Investigative questions that are comprised of already enumerated information and recognition of patterns are the heart of a complete investigation. Investigative questions can be divided into two primary groups

 

What is that?


These investigative questions aim to give you information that previously made you feel like you were not currently equipped to arrive at causality, they contribute to a concrete foundation from other questions and even declarations can stand. Common examples of these questions are “Does this file or address have known threat intelligence against it” or “Is the file new to the system”

 

I wonder if?
 

These investigative questions serve to play to your own creativity and intuitiveness, for example, its universally shared persistence is an incredibly common adversary objective so you may ask yourself where could that be established on your system or preceding that thought where would an adversary give away were they kept their persistence perhaps a temp file or command line history

 

Applying what you know an adversary could do and your own expertise as to what adversaries have done will defeat most incidents.


Its Grasp on You

As an analyst performing analysis, especially during what is perceived to be a major incident you have to achieve the quality of thought and considerations of facts at a pace not often expected of humans in any other situations. Personally, it feels like I injected adrenaline into my thigh (I'm addicted). Fortunately, analysis during a live engagement has only four focuses and these are listed in priority:

Get to a reasonable statement of facts quickly

In the most immediate possible instance you need a minor conclusion on to what you can see is happening and the criticality of the events. Usually, it's pretty easy to gather scope and or a patient 0 so ensure that is captured in your initial notification of a major breach. This first statement needs to remain unified when communicated by any party and discrepancies should be highlighted

Discover adversary behaviour in detail

At this point, you will want to prioritize speed over accuracy but do ensure you can look back at what you have recorded and have enough metadata to justify its inclusion.

Create a formal timeline

Once you have gathered the information and validated its relevancy add each item to a list in chronological order.

Formulate a summary of events

Ensure you review the data you have and begin detailing what the adversary achieved, what they looked to achieve further and if possible what their final objective likely was. It is also important not to fill in gaps where data doesn’t exist and instead articulate those gaps with recommendations to prevent the occurrence in the future.








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