Author: Anamar Taknev

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about Antivirus. In this article you will learn about Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). Let’s begin with what is it.

What is Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)?

Endpoint Detection and Response, also known as Endpoint detection and Threat response (EDT) is a tool used in endpoint security that can detect, contain, investigate and remediate malware, ransomware and other threats like cyber attacks on endpoint devices. This endpoint devices maybe desktop, laptop, mobile, servers and virtual machines.

Both are endpoint security solutions that protect the endpoint devices from malware and viruses. Although its functionality is similar to Antivirus, it is different from Antivirus. While Antivirus detects known malware & viruses, EDR can also detect advanced cyber threats and even actions that seem suspicious. It has a centralized management with agents installed on client devices with a centralized management on one device.

An EDR has two components. They are,

1. Endpoint data collection agent.
2. Endpoint centralized management console.

The endpoint agents are installed on the endpoint devices whose security needs to be monitored. This can include multiple devices. These agents collect data from the endpoint devices and send it to the centralized management console.

Importance of EDR

Constantly evolving threat landscape makes the role of EDR very important in cybersecurity. EDR’s not only mitigate known threats, but they also neutralize unknown threats based on their behaviors or action. Not just that, they mitigate the threat by responding with a counter action. EDR’s also play a role in automatic incident response and even in digital forensics and compliance testing.

How EDR works?

An EDR has the following stages while functioning. They are,

1. Collecting data:

This is the first stage and in this stage all the agents installed on endpoint devices collect data and send it to the management console. Analysts monitor the security of the devices from a single location.

2. Analyzing collected data:

All the data collected by endpoint agents may not be important from security point of view. So, the centralized Management console of an EDR filters the data and analyses it for any threats.

3. Detecting threats:

While analyzing the collected data, if EDR finds anything dangerous, it flags it as a threat and triggers an alert.

4. Planning response:

Not just sending an alert, it also responds to mitigate the threat on the machine it is detected.

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.

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.

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.

Hello, aspiring ethical hackers. In our previous blogpost, you learnt about ethical hacking. In this article, you will learn what is cybersecurity. Cybersecurity and ethical hacking can be confusing to people. That’s because they are closely related but yet they are different. But don’t worry by the end of this article, you will understand clearly the difference between them.

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is the name give to the complete process of protecting computer systems, network and data from cyber attacks and malware.

Importance of cybersecurity

Now, that you have understood what cybersecurity is, let me explain to you it’s importance. As the world moves more towards digitization, humans increasingly depend on technology and internet. 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 cybersecurity has become all too important not only for organizations but also individuals.

Principles of Cybersecurity

There are three core principles for cybersecurity. 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 Cybersecurity

Although cybersecurity 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.

Cybersecurity vs Ethical hacking

By now you should have clearly understood what cyber security is. Let’s see what is the difference between cybersecurity and ethical hacking. Ethical hacking, also known as penetration testing is a method used to identify security vulnerabilities in a network, software, applications etc by simulating hacking attacks. This is done to assess the security of an organization. Ethical hacking is part of cybersecurity.