Digital Forensic Survival Podcast

Matt Warner, Blumira CTO and Co-Founder, talks ransomware investigations.

This week is a continuation of the threats to cloud computing miniseries. We are stepping through the top 11 threats to cloud computing as identified by the Cloud Security alliance. When you are protecting cloud assets or investigating breaches of cloud assets, there is a lot to keep in mind. You must remember the standard security infrastructure, the new cloud infrastructure as well as any changes to the standard infrastructure that could be affected for your investigation. The top 11 threats to cloud computing help identify where you, as an analyst, should prioritize your time both as a starting point and how you use your limited time for continuing education. 

This week is a case study that demonstrates how fundamental DFIR triage methods can detect advanced attacks. Examiners, especially newer examiners, should find confidence in the fact that standard triage techniques have such a powerful impact on security investigations.

This week Nato Riley from Blumira pays a visit to talk about the top threats to cloud computing.

This week we continue with the Windows fast triage series and talk about lateral movement evidence that may be found in admin shares event records.  Four different types of logs are covered, each containing different information for triage purposes.

This week SUMURI's Steve Whalen (a.k.a. 'MacBoy') and Dave Melvin talk about the latest in Mac training and certification. Learn the advantages of vendor neutral training and how to prioritize it in your own training regiment.

As an analyst, it is important to identify root cause and link it back to security governance strategies. This is dealt with through root cause statements typically. What exactly should you be doing for a root cause statement? How important is it? If you produce a findings report you can count on the root cause statement being read. Other parts of the document may be skimmed through, or even ignored, but the root cause statement is going to draw the attention of a variety of different audiences. Therefore this is something you want to get right. In this episode I’m going to deliver a simple approach you can use.

Most of my episodes are about computer forensic artifacts and methods. Once in a while I like to cover non-technical topics, such as thoughts and recommendations about career development, subject matter expertise strategies, and impact exposure or delivery of your work. These soft skills are important to your career success. So this week will be on maximizing DFIR exposure in your current role, whatever that role may be. I will cover how to connect the work you do with the high-level strategies that are important to your management or your customers.

This week is a continuation of the threats to cloud computing miniseries. We are stepping through the top 11 threats to cloud computing as identified by the Cloud Security alliance. When you are protecting cloud assets or investigating breaches of cloud assets, there is a lot to keep in mind. You must remember the standard security infrastructure, the new cloud infrastructure as well as any changes to the standard infrastructure that could be affected for your investigation. The top 11 threats to cloud computing help identify where you, as an analyst, should prioritize your time both as a starting point and how you use your limited time for continuing education. 

This week we continue with the Windows fast triage series. We are up to lateral movement and talking about admin shares. On topic this week is event 5145 which is a Windows log that records verbose information about network share objects and it is an artifact you can use to triage a system or group of systems for evidence of malicious lateral movement. 

This week I wanted to take a break from Windows forensics and talk about Linux malware triage. The Linux platform offers forensic analysts the opportunity to do a very decent job performing malware triage. What I mean by this is that you do not need any special tools installed, all you essentially need is the knowledge of a handful of commands in the ability to make sense of the output. Armed with this, any analyst can do a malware triage quickly and efficiently.

This week we’re going to take a look at how standard triage methodology can detect advanced attack techniques. Even as a newer examiners, if you learn the standard triage methods that I have covered in the fast triage series, you will find the skills provide ample opportunity to detect all sorts attack activity-even very advanced attack activity. This is because there are natural chokepoints in the attack chain that can be used to your advantage. This week we are going to see the non-Windows core process triage in action through the lens of a very advanced attack dubbed “operation ghost.”

This week we take another look at the top threats to cloud computing. On tap This week is account hijacking. All analysts working in the DFIR field today must be aware of threats to cloud computing in order to be effective in their roles. 

This week I talk about lateral movement fast triage. This is the next topic in the Windows fast triage miniseries and it aligns with the goal of the entire series, which is to help new or any analyst identify the most accessible artifacts that may be quickly analyzed to find evidence of compromise. So far we have dealt with persistence, suspicious network activity, and suspicious processes. As always, I will provide a simple yet effective approach to work with lateral movement artifacts.

This week I’m doing another walk-through to illustrate how standard triage methodology can detect advanced attack techniques. Sometimes as a newer examiner, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the technical detail necessary to understand and attack. It’s also easy to become discouraged and convince yourself that it’s way too complicated for your current skill set and you may not even feel useful as a team member. This episode is going to dispel all of that and show you how a focus on the standard fast triage method provides all the knowledge you need to detect and advanced breach into an environment.

This week I’m covering malware fast triage. It occurred to me that I should revisit this issue for a couple of different reasons. I remember covering this many years ago and I believe that’s why I haven’t thought about doing anything on it lately. However, it does go hand-in-hand with the Windows fast triage series that I am doing. Part of that strategy is to look for “common malware patterns.” In an effort to maximize what the listeners get from the episodes I figured this topic definitely needs to be revisited so that when I use that term, you are at least clear on what I mean by it and the method it represents.

This week is about the top threats to cloud computing.

This week is a continuation of the Windows fast triage miniseries. While other aspects of the triage miniseries had fairly contained artifacts to examine, new process triage presents a large and complex landscape to the analyst. I have already broken down a number of effective analysis methods to make this more manageable. This week I focus on key applications to look for during a review. These applications tend to be associated more with malicious activity, at least according to threat intelligence research, so being aware of them and recognizing the potential is important. I also spend some time talking about the nuances of CMD.

A while back I did an episode on “learning from the red team” which focused on methods blue team members can utilize to better understand attacks and the artifacts affected by those attacks. One of the advantages of this method that I did not mention in that episode was how to use open source vulnerability scanners for the same purpose. This week, will be part two and I will go over freely available resources and the method to help you gain better insight into forensic artifacts.

This week is about how size up a reported vulnerability quickly.