Something happened here, and it wasn't anything good. The damage is as yet unclear, and the perp's seemingly vanished. That's where digital forensics step in, helping reconstruct what happened to uncover the answers to the most pressing security questions. And -- did you deduce? -- today's trio of Black Hat USA 2014 Briefing highlights all revolve around being a better digital detective.
Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks are highly organized and are launched for prolonged periods, but it's possible to turn this persistence against their perpetrators. APT malwares typically contain numerous DNS references to keep their command and control (c2) networks redundant, and in APT Attribution and DNS Profiling researcher Frankie Li will explain broad patterns he's discovered in these DNS-IP pairs. He'll demonstrate a tool he's created to automate the discovery of information on these pairs, and compile it into a database for later visualization and analysis.
What if computers had a simple "find malicious stuff" command? That's (kinda) the concept behind Google's GRR, an open-source live-forensics system. Think something's amiss on your box? A single GRR command can, for example, grab a netstat, a process listing, recent browsing history, and common persistence mechanisms (which it can then send on to a malware analysis solution). GRR: Find All the Badness, Collect All the Things will introduce you to GRR's use cases and its powerful new capability to detect "forensic artifacts" and perform large-scale hunts across large groups of computers.
Finally, attackers are increasingly using PowerShell to conduct command-and-control in compromised Windows environments. This creates a whole new playground of attack techniques for intruders who've already popped a few admin accounts. Investigating PowerShell Attacks will focus on common attack patterns performed through PowerShell -- lateral movement, remote command execution, reconnaissance, file transfer, and establishing persistence -- and the sources of evidence they leave behind, which you can collect and interpret both on individual hosts and at scale across the enterprise.
Regular registration ends on July 26. Please visit Black Hat USA 2014's registration page to get started.