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Beginners guide to Incident response

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about Incident Response (IR). Unfortunately, unlike pen testing or ethical hacking, the role of incident response becomes important only after a cyber attack or any other cyber incident has occurred.

What is Incident Response (IR)?

In simple terms, incident response is how you or your organization respond to a cyber attack or a data breach that occurred in your organization. Obviously, any organization will want to respond to any cyber incident in such a way that the impact or damage due to that incident is minimized and contained.

So, IR is a planned and organized response of an organization to a cyber attack or incident.

Why is incident response important?

No matter how much security an organization has, there is no guarantee that a cyber incident may not occur. This cyber attack can damage the organization’s brand reputation, affect customers retention, damage intellectual property etc. A data breach can simply make a business run out of business.

IR aims to reduce this damage as quickly as possible. This requires a definite plan instead of ad hoc responses.

Stages of Incident Response

As I told you, Incident response should follow a planned and organized approach that should make the organization quickly recover from the impact of the cyber attack. Any good Incident response should have 5 steps. They are,

1.Preparation or Planning

Every organization should have a definite Incident response plan that caters to its requirements and depends on resources it wants to protect in its organization. This plan should be in written format. It should also have a dedicated incident response team that is not only aware of the incident response plan but also trained in it. This team should have the necessary tools and documentation ready in the case of a cyber attack.

2.Identification:

The next step is identifying the incident. In this era of false positives and false negatives, the incident response teams should be able to first determine what is a cyber attack to its organization. For example, let’s imagine an organization uses Windows XP machines in its organization. You know Windows XP machines are vulnerable to ms08-067.

Multiple SYN requests to SMB port of Windows XP machines of an organization may raise shackles but it is not yet an incident. But somebody exploiting the vulnerability to gain a shell or creating a new user account on that Windows XP machine can be termed as an incident.

3.Containment:

Once an incident has been identified correctly, the next step should be to limit and prevent further damage. The infected resource should be isolated and steps taken to ensure that customers or employees don’t experience any problems in accessing the resource.

Going with the same example we gave above, the infected Windows XP machine should be isolated so that the infection can be prevented from spreading to other devices on the network. In some cases, the network traffic needs to be rerouted or redirected. Once isolated, the forensics team should be informed so that it can perform digital forensics to further investigate the incident.

4.Eradication:

After the infected system or resource is isolated and the forensics team is done with creating forensic images of the infected system, the next step is the removal and restoration of systems affected by the security incident. For example, this stage involves fixing the ms08-067 vulnerability and removing the malware or payload, backdoors from the infected system. The important role of this stage is to make sure that the system cannot be exploited again.

5. Recovery

This stage involves bringing the infected system back into production environment and to make sure that another incident doesn’t occur. Before the infected system is brought back into production again, they are tested, monitored, validated and cleansed of all malware.

All of the above steps should be written in policy plan and should be documented. That’s all about Incident response. Next, learn how to prevent your organization from being hacked with threat intelligence.

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Beginners guide to malware analysis

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you have learnt in detail about malware. In this article, you will learn about malware analysis.

What is malware analysis?

Malware analysis is the process of analyzing the code of the Virus to find out what it does, how it works, how it evades Antivirus etc. This helps in detection and prevention of the threat.

Importance of analyzing malware

Analyzing of malware helps us to understand the functionality of malware and what it does when executed, the level of damage it causes after infection etc. It will also help us to understand how malware infected our machine at first. By knowing these, better mitigation can be planned for present and future.

Types of malware analysis

There are variety of techniques used to analyze malware. They are,

1. Static analysis:

In this type of analysis, the static properties of the virus are analyzed without actually executing it. This type of analysis helps us to understand details like nature of malware, file names, IP addresses and domains, metadata etc.

2. Dynamic analysis:

In this analysis, the virus is actively executed in a sandbox. A sandbox is an isolated and secure environment in which you can safely execute code of malware. Analyzing it this way is an improvement over static analysis as we can see malware in action. This helps us to gather more information about the malware.

3. Hybrid analysis:

Some types of advanced malware have protection mechanisms to prevent anyone from analyzing the malware. For example, anti-sandbox feature is used that tells malware to stay dormant if it detects a sandbox. It is in cases like these, hybrid analysis becomes important. It combines both static and dynamic analysis to analyze the malware.

Stages in analyzing malware

Analyzing of malware has the following stages. They are,

1. Get malware sample:

Obviously, getting the malware sample is the first step if you want to analyze its code.

2. Build a lab to analyze malware:

The next step in analyzing the code of malware is creation of an isolated and safe environment without any risk of infection to the organization’s network.

3. Performing static analysis:

Next step is to get the virus sample into the malware analysis lab and perform static analysis on it. As already learnt, this helps us to understand the behavioral properties of malware.

4. Performing automated analysis:

The next step is to use a automated tool to analyze malware. This analysis can determine potential risks if malware infects a machine.

5. Manual code review:

In this stage, the code of the malware is reversed manually using debuggers, disassembly compilers and other specialized tools to understand its behavior.

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Beginners guide to digital forensics

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about threat intelligence. In this article, you will learn about digital forensics. It plays an important role not only in investigating cyber attacks but also in solving crimes that have digital elements attached to it. This digital evidence is admissible in court proceedings. In Information security, unlike penetration testing, forensics comes after the cyber attack has already occurred.

What is digital forensics?

Digital forensics, a branch of forensic science is a process that includes identification collection, acquisition, analysis and reporting of any information or evidence from digital devices that were used as part of a crime or victims of cyber attacks.

Types of digital forensics

Digital forensics has different branches. They are,

1. Computer forensics:

Also known as cyber forensics, this branch deals with collecting digital evidence from computers.

2. Mobile forensics:

As you might have guessed by now, this branch deals with collection of digital evidence from mobile devices like smart phones, tablets etc.

3. Network forensics:

This branch deals with collection and analysis of digital evidence from network traffic.

4. Database forensics:

This branch deals with analyzing databases for digital evidence.

5. Cloud forensics:

This branch deals with collecting and analyzing digital evidence from the cloud.

Stages of digital forensics

Digital forensics has five stages. They are,

1. Identification of digital evidence:

The first stage is identifying where the digital evidence may be present after a cyber attack or cyber incident.

2. Acquisition and preservation:

After identifying where digital evidence may be present, the next step is to collect this evidence and more importantly preserve it from being contaminated. If the evidence gets contaminated, it will not be admissible in court.

3. Analysis:

In this stage, the collected and carefully preserved digital evidence is analyzed to reconstruct the events of the cyber attack or cyber crime.

4. Documentation:

After all the evidence related to the cyber crime or cyber attack has been analyzed, the next step is documenting all the evidence in a clean manner to be presented in a court.

5. Presentation:

The last stage is presenting all the documented evidence in court or to the affected and all other stakeholders for conviction and to help courts in decision making.

Next, learn how to respond in case of a cyber incident with incident response.

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    Beginners guide to Threat Intelligence

    Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about about cybersecurity. In this article, you will learn everything you need to know about threat intelligence. Threat intelligence (TI) plays a very important role in enhancing cybersecurity. But first, let’s start with what actually is a threat.

    What is a threat?

    A threat is any action or event that can disrupt the organization’s activities. For example, these actions can be deleting the user accounts of employees of the organization, making their services unavailable to their customers etc.

    What is threat intelligence?

    TI is the collection, processing and analysis of data using various tools and techniques to gather meaningful information about existing and even emerging threats that can affect the security of the organization.

    Why is Threat Intelligence important?

    TI plays a proactive role in improving the security of the organization by understanding about emerging threats. It helps us to identify, prepare and prevent cyber attacks by providing information about the attacker, their motive and capabilities. A thorough understanding about the vulnerabilities, attacker motives and techniques allows us to prevent and mitigate cyberattacks.

    Types of threat intelligence

    There are three types of intelligence for threats. They are,

    1. Tactical TI
    2. Operation TI
    3. Strategic TI

    Let’s learn about each of them in detail.

    1. Tactical threat intelligence (TTI):

    As you can guess by its name, this type of intelligence identifies information like Indicators Of Compromise (IOC), other information such as IP addresses of listeners and Command & Control (C&C) servers, email subject lines etc.

    This information is useful to Security Operation Center’s (SOC’s) to predict and detect future attacks correctly. It is also helpful in incident response, threat hunting and malware analysis.

    2. Operational threat intelligence (OTI):

    This type of intelligence focusses on understanding target adversary’s strengths and capabilities, their attack infrastructure, TTPs, etc. This information helps us to identify threat actors and APTs that are more likely to attack a particular organization. Obviously, it is more broader in scope than tactical intelligence. After gathering this intel, cybersecurity professionals of an organization can then determine security controls and mitigations to prevent that attacks.

    3. Strategic threat intelligence (STI):

    This type of intelligence focuses on understanding high level trends like global threat landscapes and the position of an organization inside that threat landscapes. It is less technical and more theoretical and mainly for executive level security professionals like CISO, CIO, CTO etc.

    Threat intelligence Life cycle

    The TI lifecycle is a continuous process and consists of five stages. They are,

    1. Planning:

    Before any organization even starts collecting data for TI, it should have a proper threat intelligence plan. This plan should include information about what intel an organization needs to collect to protect its sensitive resources.

    2. Collection:

    After preparing a TI plan, the next step is to collect new threat data. The data can be collected from systems in local network using tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), EDR, XDR, ASM etc and also from sources like underground hacker forums, dark web, open source and commercial threat intelligence feeds and InfoSec community.

    3. Processing:

    Next, all the collected data is aggregated, standardized and corrected to make analysis of the data easier. Note that all the threat data collected doesn’t have the information we want. There may be false positives ,errors and even irrelevant data.

    4. Analysis:

    It is at this stage that the raw threat data becomes actual threat intelligence. Here the insights needed to meet TI requirements are extracted and then the next steps are planned.

    5. Dissemination:

    The threat intel team shows all the insights and recommendations to appropriate stakeholders to plan the next course of action.

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    Beginners guide to Information security

    Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about cybersecurity. In this blogpost, you will learn about Information security. The word Information security is often used interchangeably used with cybersecurity but they are different although not entirely. So, let’s begin with definition of Information security.

    What is Information security?

    Information security, also known as InfoSec is the name given to all the processes and procedures that are used to protect information (both digital and physical) from cyber threats in an organization.

    Importance of Information security

    Now, that you have understood what InfoSec is, let me explain to you it’s importance. As the world moves more towards digitization, humans increasingly depend on technology and internet for storing and transmitting information. This information is very important and faces both cyber and physical threats. With the difficulty of performing a hacking attack becoming simple day-by-day and threat actors and cybercriminals increasingly evolving their tactics, the role of information security has become all too important not only for organizations but also individuals.

    Principles of Information security

    InfoSec has there core principles. Popularly known as CIA triangle, they are Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability. Let’s learn about each of them in detail.

    1.Confidentiality:

    Confidentiality ensures that all the sensitive information is safe from unauthorized access.

    2. Integrity:

    Integrity ensures that the sensitive information is safe from destruction without proper authorization.

    3. Availability:

    Availability ensures that the information is available to authorized users whenever they need them.

    Types of information security

    Although InfoSec is a single word, it is a combination of different branches. Let’s learn about each of them in detail.

    1.Network security:

    Network security refers to protection of the network infrastructure both software and hardware, communication infrastructure, communication protocols etc. This includes all the devices in a network, communication between them and even between them and external assets.

    2.Endpoint security:

    Endpoint security deals with security of the endpoint devices in the network. These include Desktops, Laptops and other devices that act as access point to an organization’s network.

    3. Web security:

    This refers to protection of websites, web applications and the infrastructure coming with it.

    4. Mobile security:

    Mobile security is concerned with security of the mobile devices like mobiles and tablets which are increasingly being used in organizations.

    5. Application security

    Application security deals with protection of all the applications used in organization.

    6. Cloud security:

    Cloud security refers to protecting of data, applications and services hosted in private and public cloud environment.

    7. IoT Security:

    IOT security refers to protection of Internet Of Things (IOT) devices and networks from cyber attack and data breaches.

    Information Security vs Cybersecurity

    By now you should have clearly understood what InfoSec is. Let’s see what is the difference between InfoSec and cybersecurity. Cyber security is the entire practice of protecting computers, networks and data from cyber attacks. InfoSec is protection of all kinds of information from threats.