Provided by SANS

About the course

ADVANCED THREATS ARE IN YOUR NETWORK - IT'S TIME TO GO HUNTING!

The FOR508: Advanced Digital Forensics, Incident Response, and Threat Hunting course will help you to:

• Detect how and when a breach occurred
• Identify compromised and affected systems
• Perform damage assessments and determine what was stolen or changed
• Contain and remediate incidents
• Develop key sources of threat intelligence
• Hunt down additional breaches using knowledge of the adversary

DAY 0: A 3-letter government agency contacts you to say an advanced threat group is targeting organizations like yours, and that your organization is likely a target. They won't tell how they know, but they suspect that there are already several breached systems within your enterprise. An advanced persistent threat, aka an APT, is likely involved. This is the most sophisticated threat that you are likely to face in your efforts to defend your systems and data, and these adversaries may have been actively rummaging through your network undetected for months or even years.

This is a hypothetical situation, but the chances are very high that hidden threats already exist inside your organization's networks. Organizations can't afford to believe that their security measures are perfect and impenetrable, no matter how thorough their security precautions might be. Prevention systems alone are insufficient to counter focused human adversaries who know how to get around most security and monitoring tools.

The key is to constantly look for attacks that get past security systems, and to catch intrusions in progress, rather than after attackers have completed their objectives and done significant damage to the organization. For the incident responder, this process is known as "threat hunting." Threat hunting uses known adversary behaviors to proactively examine the network and endpoints in order to identify new data breaches.

Threat hunting and Incident response tactics and procedures have evolved rapidly over the past several years. Your team can no longer afford to use antiquated incident response and threat hunting techniques that fail to properly identify compromised systems, provide ineffective containment of the breach, and ultimately fail to rapidly remediate the incident. Incident response and threat hunting teams are the keys to identifying and observing malware indicators and patterns of activity in order to generate accurate threat intelligence that can be used to detect current and future intrusions.

Course Syllabus

FOR508.1: Advanced Incident Response & Threat Hunting

Overview

There are ways to gain an advantage against the adversaries targeting you - and it starts with the right mindset and knowing what works.

Incident responders and threat hunters should be armed with the latest tools, memory analysis techniques, and enterprise methodologies to identify, track, and contain advanced adversaries and to remediate incidents. Incident response and threat hunting analysts must be able to scale their analysis across thousands of systems in their enterprise. This section examines the six-step incident response methodology as it applies to incident response for advanced threat groups. We will show the importance of developing cyber threat intelligence to impact the adversaries' "kill chain." We will also demonstrate live response techniques and tactics that can be applied to a single system and across the entire enterprise.

Endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities are increasingly a requirement to track targeted attacks by an APT group or organized crime syndicates that can rapidly propagate through hundreds of systems. Rapid response to multiple distributed systems cannot be accomplished using the standard "pull the hard drive" forensic examination methodology. Such an approach will alert the adversaries that you are aware of them and may allow them to adapt quickly and exfiltrate sensitive information in response.

Students will receive a full six-month license of F-Response Enterprise Edition, enabling them to use their workstation or the SIFT workstation to connect and script actions on hundreds or thousands of systems in the enterprise. This capability is used to benchmark, facilitate, and demonstrate new incident response and threat hunting technologies that enable a responder to look for indicators of compromise across the entire enterprise network.

Exercises

• SIFT Workstation orientation
• Access to remote endpoint data collection
• Cyber threat intelligence - Indicator creation and examination
• Defense evasion techniques - Malware defense evasion and detection
• Understanding core Windows processes
• Persistence - Malware persistence detection and analysis
• Remote endpoint memory examination using F-Response Enterprise
• Remote endpoint incident response, hunting, and analysis using F-Response Enterprise

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

• Real Incident Response Tactics
  • Preparation: Key Tools, Techniques, and Procedures that an Incident Response Team Needs to Respond Properly to Intrusions
  • Identification/Scoping: Proper Scoping of an Incident and Detection of All Compromised Systems in the Enterprise
  • Containment/Intelligence Development: Restricting Access, Monitoring, and Learning about the Adversary in order to Develop threat Intelligence
  • Eradication/Remediation: Determining and Executing Key Steps that Must Be Taken to Help Stop the Current Incident
  • Recovery: Recording of the Threat Intelligence to Be Used in the Event of a Similar Adversary Returning to the Enterprise
  • Avoiding "Whack-A-Mole" Incident Response: Going beyond Immediate Eradication without Proper Incident Scoping/Containment
• Threat Hunting
  • Hunting versus Reactive Response
  • Intelligence-Driven Incident Response
  • Building a Continuous Incident Response/Threat Hunting Capability
  • Forensic Analysis versus Threat Hunting across Endpoints
  • Threat Hunt Team Roles
• Cyber Threat Intelligence
  • Importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence
  • Understanding the "Kill Chain"
  • Threat Intelligence Creation and Use During Incident Response and Threat Hunting
  • Creation of Indicators of Compromise
  • Incident Response Team Life-Cycle Overview
  • ATT&CK - MITRE's Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge (ATT&CK(TM))
  • Threat Hunting in the Enterprise
  • Identification of Compromised Systems
  • Finding Active and Dormant Malware
  • Digitally Signed Malware
  • Malware Characteristics
  • Common Hiding Mechanisms
  • Finding Evil by Understanding Normal
  • Understanding Common Windows Services and Processes
  • svchost.exe Abuse
• Malware Defense Evasion and Identification
  • Service Hijacking/Replacement
  • Frequent Compilation
  • Binary Padding
  • Packing/Armoring
  • Dormant Malware
  • Signing Code with Valid Cert
  • Anti-Forensics/Timestomping
• Malware Persistence Identification
  • AutoStart Locations, RunKeys
  • Service Creation/Replacement
  • Service Failure Recovery
  • Scheduled Tasks
  • DLL Hijacking
  • WMI Event Consumers
  • More Advanced - Local Group Policy, MS Office Add-In, or BIOS Flashing
• Remote and Enterprise Incident Response
  • Remote Endpoint Access in the Enterprise
  • RemoteEndpoint Host-based Analysis
  • Scalable Host-based Analysis (One Analyst Examining 1,000 Systems) and Data Stacking
  • Remote Memory Analysis

FOR508.2: Memory Forensics in Incident Response & Threat Hunting

Overview

During an intrusion, using memory analysis sometimes feels like cheating. Finding active malware shouldnâÂÂt be this easy!

Now a critical component of many incident response and threat hunting teams that detect advanced threats in their organization, memory forensics has come a long way in just a few years. Memory forensics can be extraordinarily effective at finding evidence of worms, rootkits, and advanced malware used by an APT group of attackers. Traditionally, memory analysis was solely the domain of Windows internals experts, but the recent development of new tools makes it accessible today to anyone, especially incident responders and threat hunters. Better tools, interfaces and detection heuristics have greatly leveled the playing field. Understanding attack patterns in memory is a core analyst skill applicable across a wide range of endpoint detection and response products. This extremely popular section will introduce some of the most capable tools available and provide you with a solid basis to add foundational and advanced memory forensic skills to your incident response and forensics capabilities.

Exercises

• Detect unknown live and dormant custom malware in memory across multiple systems in an enterprise environment
• Examine Windows process trees to identify normal versus anomalies
• Find APT "beacon" malware over common ports used by targeted attackers to access command and control (C2) channels
• Find residual attacker command-line activity through scanning strings in memory and by extracting command history buffers
• Compare compromised system memory against a baseline system using Frequency of Least Occurrence stacking techniques
• Identify advanced malware hiding techniques, including code injection and rootkits
• Employ indicators of compromise to automate analysis
• Analyze memory from infected systems:
  • Stuxnet
  • TDL3/ TDSS
  • Cozyduke RAT
  • Rundll32
  • Zeus/Zbot
  • Conficker
  • Sobig
  • StormWorm Rootkit
  • Black Energy
  • PsExec
  • Custom APT command and control malware

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

Memory Acquisition

• Acquisition of System Memory from both Windows 32/64 Bit Systems
• Hibernation and Pagefile Memory Extraction and Conversion
• Virtual Machine Memory Acquisition
• Memory Changes in Windows 10

Memory Forensics Analysis Process for Response and Hunting

• Identify Rogue Processes
• Analyze Process DLLs and Handles
• Review Network Artifacts
• Look for Evidence of Code Injection
• Check for Signs of a Rootkit
• Acquire Suspicious Processes and Drivers

Memory Forensics Examinations

• Live Memory Forensics
• Advanced Memory Analysis with Volatility
• Webshell Detection Via Process Tree Analysis
• Code Injection, Malware, and Rootkit Hunting in Memory
• Perform In-Memory Windows Registry Examinations
• Extract Typed Adversary Command Lines
• Investigate Windows Services
• Hunting Malware Using Comparison Baseline Systems
• Find and Dump Cached Files from RAM
• Dumping Hashes and Credentials from Memory

Memory Analysis Tools

• Rekall
• Volatility
• Comae Windows Memory Toolkit

FOR508.3: Intrusion Forensics

Overview

Attackers are sloppy; they leave footprints everywhere. Learn the secrets of the best hunters.

Cyber defenders have a wide variety of tools and artifacts available to identify, hunt, and track adversary activity in a network. Each attacker action leaves a corresponding artifact, and understanding what is left behind as footprints can be critical to both red and blue team members. Attacks follow a predictable pattern, and we focus our detective efforts on immutable portions of that pattern. As an example, at some point an attacker will need to run code to accomplish its objectives. We can identify this activity via application execution artifacts. The attacker will also need one or more accounts to run code. Consequently, account auditing is a powerful means of identifying malicious actions. An attacker also needs a means to move throughout the network, so we look for artifacts left by the relatively small number of ways there are to accomplish this part of their mission. In this section, we cover common attacker tradecraft and discuss the various data sources and forensic tools you can use to identify malicious activity in the enterprise.

Exercises

• Hunting and detecting evidence of execution with Shimcache
• Shimcache memory RAM examinations
• Prefetch carving and extraction from memory and unallocated space
• Finding evil in RecentFileCache and Volume Shadow copies
• Hunting and tracking lateral movement with event log analysis
• Discovering credential abuse with event log extraction and analysis

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

• Advanced Evidence of Execution Detection
  • Attacker Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Overserved through Process Execution
  • Application Compatibility Cache (ShimCache)
  • Prefetch and Shimcache Extraction via Memory
  • RecentFileCache
  • Amcache Registry Examination
• Window Shadow Volume Copy Analysis
  • Volume Shadow Copy Analysis Options
  • Raw and Live Shadow Copy Examination Using the SIFT Workstation
  • Integrating Shadow Copy Analysis into Investigations
  • Targeted Shadow Copy Analysis
• Stealing and Utilization of Legitimate Credentials
  • Pass the Hash
  • Single Sign On (SSO) Dumping Using Mimikatz
  • Token Stealing
  • Cached Credentials
  • LSA Secrets
  • Kerberos Attacks
  • NTDS.DIT theft
• Lateral Movement Adversary Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs)
  • Compromising Credentials Techniques
  • Remote Desktop Services Misuse
  • Windows Admin Share Abuse
  • PsExec Utilization
  • Windows Remote Management Tool Techniques
  • PowerShell Remoting/WMIC Hacking
  • Vulnerability Exploitation
• Event Log Analysis for Incident Responders and Hunters
  • Profiling Account Usage and Logons
  • Tracking and Hunting Lateral Movement
  • Identifying Suspicious Services
  • Detecting Rogue Application Installation
  • Finding Malware Execution and Process Tracking
  • Capturing Command Lines and Scripts
  • Powershell Logging and ScriptBlock Logging
  • WMI Activity Logging
  • Anti-Forensics and Event Log Clearing

FOR508.4: Timeline Analysis

Overview

Timeline analysis will change the way you approach digital forensics, threat hunting, and incident response...forever.

Learn advanced incident response and hunting techniques uncovered via timeline analysis directly from the authors who pioneered timeline analysis tradecraft. Temporal data are located everywhere on a computer system. Filesystem modified/access/creation/change times, log files, network data, registry data, and Internet history files all contain time data that can be correlated into critical analysis to successfully solve cases. Pioneered by Rob Lee in 2001, timeline analysis has become a critical incident response, hunting, and forensics technique. New timeline analysis frameworks provide the means to conduct simultaneous examinations of a multitude of time-based artifacts. The analysis that once took days now takes minutes. This section will step you through the two primary methods of building and analyzing timelines created during advanced incident response, threat hunting, and forensic cases. Exercises will show analysts how to create a timeline and also how to introduce the key methods to help you use those timelines effectively in your cases.

Exercises

• Using timeline analysis, track adversary activity by hunting an APT group's footprints of malware, lateral movement, and persistence
• Target hidden and time-stomped malware and utilities that an APT uses to move in the network and maintain its presence
• Track APT activity second-by-second through in-depth super-timeline analysis
• Observe targeted attackers laterally move to other systems in the enterprise by watching a trail left in filesystem times, registry, Shimcache, and other temporal-based artifacts
• Learn how to filter system artifact, file system, and registry timelines to target specific data efficiently

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

• Timeline Analysis Overview
  • Timeline Benefits
  • Prerequisite Knowledge
  • Finding the Pivot Point
  • Timeline Context Clues
  • Timeline Analysis Process

• Memory Analysis Timeline Creation

  • Memory Timelining
• Filesystem Timeline Creation and Analysis
  • MACB Meaning by Filesystem
  • Windows Time Rules (File Copy versus File Move)
  • Filesystem Timeline Creation Using Sleuthkit and fls
  • Bodyfile Analysis and Filtering Using the mactime Tool
• Super Timeline Creation and Analysis
  • Super Timeline Artifact Rules
  • Program Execution, File Knowledge, File Opening, File Deletion
  • Timeline Creation with log2timeline/Plaso
  • log2timeline Input Modules
  • log2timeline Output Modules
  • Filtering the Super Timeline Using psort
  • Targeted Super Timeline Creation
  • Automated Super Timeline Creation
  • Super Timeline Analysis
  • Volume Shadow Copy Timelining

FOR508.5: Incident Response & Hunting Across the Enterprise | Advanced Adversary & Anti-Forensics Detection

Overview

Advanced adversaries are good. We must be better.

Over the years, we have observed that many incident responders and threat hunters have a hard time finding threats without pre-built indicators of compromise or threat intelligence gathered before a breach. This is especially true in APT adversary intrusions. This advanced session will demonstrate techniques used by first responders to identify malware or forensic artifacts when very little information exists about their capabilities or hidden locations. We will discuss techniques to help funnel possibilities down to the candidates most likely to be evil malware trying to hide on the system.

Exercises

• Find unknown malware across your enterprise by looking for dormant and active malware traces
• Track which systems the targeted attackers laterally moved to in the enterprise and how they transitioned from system to system so easily without being detected
• Understand how an APT group can acquire domain admin rights in a locked-down environment

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

• Evolution of Incident Response Scripting across Endpoints
  • WMIC
  • PowerShell
  • Incident Response Triage Investigations with PowerShell
• Malware and Anti-Forensic Detection
  • NTFS Filesystem Analysis
    • Master File Table (MFT) Critical Areas
    • NTFS System Files
    • NTFS Metadata Attributes ($Standard_Information, $Filename, $Data)
    • Rules of Windows Timestamps for $StdInfo and $Filename
    • Timestomp Detection via NTFS Timestamp Analysis
    • Resident versus Nonresident Files
    • Hidden Data in Alternate Data Streams
    • Finding Wiped/Deleted Files Using Directory Listings and the $I30 File
    • Filesystem Flight Recorders: Transaction Logging and the $Logfile and $UsnJrnl
    • What Happens When Data Are Deleted from an NTFS Filesystem?
• Anti-Forensic Detection Methodologies
  • MFT Anomalies
  • Timeline Anomalies
  • Deleted File
  • Deleted Registry Keys
  • File Wiping
  • Adjusting Timestamps
• Identifying Compromised Hosts without Active Malware
  • Rapid Data Triage Analysis
  • Cyber Threat Intelligence and Indicators of Compromise Searching
  • Evidence of Persistence
  • Super-timeline Examination
  • Packing/Entropy/Executable Anomaly/Density Checks
  • System Logs
  • Memory Analysis
  • Malware Identification

FOR508.6: The APT Incident Response Challenge

Overview

This incredibly rich and realistic enterprise intrusion exercise is based on a real-world advanced persistent threat (APT) group. It brings together techniques learned earlier in the course and tests your newly acquired skills in a case that simulates an attack by an advanced adversary. The challenge brings it all together using a real intrusion into a complete Windows enterprise environment. You will be asked to uncover how the systems were compromised in the initial intrusion, find other systems the adversary moved to laterally, and identify intellectual property stolen via data exfiltration. You will walk out of the course with hands-on experience investigating realistic attacks, curated by a cadre of instructors with decades of experience fighting advanced threats from attackers ranging from nation-states to financial crime syndicates and hactivist groups.

CPE/CMU Credits: 6

Topics

• The Intrusion Forensic Challenge will ask each incident response team to analyze multiple systems in an enterprise network with many endpoints.
• During the challenge, each incident response team will be asked to answer key questions and address critical issues in the different categories listed below, just as they would during a real breach in their organizations:

IDENTIFICATION AND SCOPING:

1. How and when did the APT group breach our network?

2. List all compromised systems by IP address and specific evidence of compromise.

3. When and how did the attackers first laterally move to each system?

CONTAINMENT AND THREAT INTELLIGENCE GATHERING:

4. How and when did the attackers obtain domain administrator credentials?

5. Once on other systems, what did the attackers look for on each system?

6. Find extracted email from executive accounts and perform damage assessment.

7. Determine what was stolen: Recover any .rar files or other archives exfiltrated, find encoding passwords, and extract the contents to verify extracted data.

8. Collect and list all malware used in the attack.

9. Develop and present security intelligence or an indicator of compromise for the APT-group "beacon" malware for both host- and network-based enterprise scoping. What specific indicators exist for the use of this malware?

REMEDIATION AND RECOVERY

10. Do we need to change the passwords for every user in the domain or just the ones affected by the systems compromised?

11. Based on the attacker techniques and tools discovered during the incident, what are the recommended steps to remediate and recover from this incident?

a. What systems need to be rebuilt?

b. What IP addresses need to be blocked?

c.What countermeasures should we deploy to slow or stop these attackers if they come back?

d. What recommendations would you make to detect these intruders in our network again?

Who Should Attend

• Incident Response Team Members who regularly respond to complex security incidents/intrusions from APT groups/advanced adversaries and need to know how to detect, investigate, remediate, and recover from compromised systems across endpoints in the enterprise.
• Threat Hunters who are seeking to understand threats more fully and how to learn from them in order to more effectively hunt threats and counter their tradecraft.
• Security Operations Center (SOC) Analysts looking to better understand alerts, build the skills necessary to triage events, and fully leverage advanced endpoint detection and response capabilities.
• Experienced Digital Forensic Analysts who want to consolidate and expand their understanding of memory and timeline forensics, investigation of technically advanced individuals, incident response tactics, and advanced intrusion investigations.
• Information Security Professionals who may encounter data breach incidents and intrusions.
• Federal Agents and Law Enforcement Professionals who want to master advanced intrusion investigations and incident response, and expand their investigative skills beyond traditional host-based digital forensics.
• Red Team Members, Penetration Testers, and Exploit Developers who want to learn how their opponents can identify their actions, how common mistakes can compromise operations on remote systems, and how to avoid those mistakes. This course covers remote system forensics and data collection techniques that can be easily integrated into post-exploit operating procedures and exploit- testing batteries.
• SANS FOR500 and SEC504 Graduates looking to take their skills to the next level.

Prerequisites

FOR508 is an advanced incident response and threat hunting course that focuses on detecting and responding to advanced persistent threats and organized crime threat groups. We do not cover the introduction or basics of incident response, Windows digital forensics, or hacker techniques in this course.

We recommend that you take FOR500: Windows Forensics or have a background in the information covered in that course prior to attending FOR508.

What You Will Receive

SIFT Workstation

• This course extensively uses the SIFT Workstation to teach incident responders and forensic analysts how to respond to and investigate sophisticated attacks
• The SIFT Workstation contains hundreds of free and open-source tools, easily matching any modern forensic and incident response commercial response tool suite
• A virtual machine is used with many of the hands-on class exercises
• Ubuntu Linux LTS Base
• 64-bit base system
• Better memory utilization
• Auto-DFIR package update and customizations
• Latest forensics tools and techniques
• VMware Appliance ready to tackle forensics
• Cross-compatibility between Linux and Windows
• Expanded file system support (NTFS, HFS, EXFAT, and more)

F-Response Enterprise (Endpoint Collection Capability)

• Enables incident responders to access remote systems and physical memory of a remote computer via the network
• Gives any incident response or forensics tool the capability to be used across the enterprise
• Perfect for intrusion investigations and data breach incident response situations.
• Deployable agent to remote systems
• SIFT Workstation compatible
• Vendor neutral - works with just about any tool
• Number of simultaneous examiners = unlimited
• Number of simultaneous agents deployed = unlimited
• The six-month license allows F-Response Enterprise to continue to be used and benchmarked in your environment at work/home

Two 64 GB Course USBs

• USB loaded with APT case images, memory captures, SIFT Workstation 3, tools, and documentation

SANS DFIR APT Case Exercise Workbook

• Exercise book is over 250 pages long with detailed step-by-step instructions and examples to help you become a master incident responder

Incident Response & Computer Forensics, Third Edition, by Jason Luttgens, Matt Pepe, and Kevin Mandia

FOR508 Incident Response and Threat Hunting Training Will Prepare Your Team To:

• Learn and master the tools, techniques, and procedures necessary to effectively hunt, detect, and contain a variety of adversaries and to remediate incidents
• Detect and hunt unknown live, dormant, and custom malware in memory across multiple Windows systems in an enterprise environment
• Hunt through and perform incident response across hundreds of unique systems simultaneously using PowerShell or F-Response Enterprise and the SIFT Workstation
• Identify and track malware beaconing outbound to its command and control (C2) channel via memory forensics, registry analysis, and network connection residue
• Determine how the breach occurred by identifying the beachhead and spear phishing attack mechanisms
• Target advanced adversary anti-forensics techniques like hidden and time-stomped malware, along with utility-ware used to move in the network and maintain an attackerâÂÂs presence
• Use memory analysis, incident response, and threat hunting tools in the SIFT Workstation to detect hidden processes, malware, attacker command lines, rootkits, network connections, and more
• Track user and attacker activity second-by-second on the system you are analyzing through in-depth timeline and super-timeline analysis
• Recover data cleared using anti-forensics techniques via Volume Shadow Copy and Restore Point analysis
• Identify lateral movement and pivots within your enterprise across your endpoints, showing how attackers transition from system to system without detection
• Understand how the attacker can acquire legitimate credentials - including domain administrator rights - even in a locked-down environment
• Track data movement as the attackers collect critical data and shift them to exfiltration collection points
• Recover and analyze archives and .rar files used by APT-like attackers to exfiltrate sensitive data from the enterprise network
• Use collected data to perform effective remediation across the entire enterprise