FOR508: Advanced Digital Forensics and Incident Response
FOR508 course exceeded my expectations in every way. It provided me the skills, knowledge, and tools to effectively respond to and handle APTS and other enterprise wide threats.
The SANS Institute is currently the leader in the commercial IR and Computer Forensic training market. They have a large number of quality courses.
THE ADVANCED PERSISTENT THREAT IS IN YOUR NETWORK - TIME TO GO HUNTING!
DAY 0: A 3-letter government agency contacts you to say critical information was stolen through a targeted attack on your organization. They won't tell how they know, but they identify several breached systems within your enterprise. An Advanced Persistent Threat adversary, aka an APT, is likely involved - the most sophisticated threat you are likely to face in your efforts to defend your systems and data.
Over 80% of all breach victims learn of a compromise from third-party notifications, not from internal security teams. In most cases, adversaries have been rummaging through your network undetected for months or even years.
Incident response tactics and procedures have evolved rapidly over the past several years. Data breaches and intrusions are growing more complex. Adversaries are no longer compromising one or two systems in your enterprise; they are compromising hundreds. Your team can no longer afford antiquated incident response techniques that fail to properly identify compromised systems, provide ineffective containment of the breach, and ultimately fail to rapidly remediate the incident.
FOR508: Advanced Digital Forensics and Incident Response will help you determine:
- How did the breach occur?
- What systems were compromised and affected?
- What did attackers take? What did they change?
- How do we contain and remediate the incident?
This in-depth incident response course provides responders with advanced skills to hunt down, counter, and recover from a wide range of threats within enterprise networks, including APT adversaries, organized crime syndicates, and hactivism. Constantly updated, the incident response course (FOR508) addresses today's incidents by providing hands-on incident response tactics and techniques that elite responders are successfully using in real-world breach cases.
A hands-on enterprise intrusion lab - developed from a real-world targeted APT attack on an enterprise network and based on how an APT group will target your network - leads you through the challenges and solutions via extensive use of the SANS SIFT Workstation collection of tools.
During the intrusion lab exercises, you will identify where the initial targeted attack occurred and lateral movement through multiple compromised systems. You will extract and create crucial cyber threat intelligence that can help you properly scope the compromise and detect future breaches.
During a targeted attack, an organization needs the best incident response team in the field. FOR508: Advanced Digital Forensics and Incident Response will train you and your team to respond, detect, scope, and stop intrusions and data breaches.
GATHER YOUR INCIDENT RESPONSE TEAM - IT'S TIME TO GO HUNTING
FOR508 INCIDENT RESPONSE TRAINING WILL PREPARE YOUR TEAM TO:
- Learn and master the tools, techniques, and procedures necessary in order to effectively detect, contain, and remediate against a variety of adversaries.
- Detect unknown live, dormant, and custom malware in memory across multiple Windows systems in an enterprise environment.
- Respond to hundreds of unique systems simultaneously using F-Response Enterprise and the SANS SIFT Workstation.
- Identify 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 anti-forensics techniques like hidden and time-stomped malware, along with utility-ware used to move in the network and maintain the attacker's presence.
- Use memory analysis and incident response 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.
- Learn how file systems work and discover powerful forensics artifacts like NTFS $I30 indexes, journal parsing, and detailed Master File Table analysis.
- Identify lateral movement and pivots within your enterprise, 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 it to exfiltration collection points.
- Recover and analyze proprietary archive form .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.
Course Topics
- Advanced use of a wide range of best-of-breed open-source tools in the SANS SIFT Workstation to perform incident response and digital forensics.
- Responding to advanced adversaries such as nation-state actors, organized crime, and hacktivists.
- Rapid incident response analysis and breach assessment.
- Incident response and intrusion forensics methodology.
- Remote and enterprise incident response system analysis.
- Windows live incident response.
- Memory analysis during incident response.
- Timeline analysis.
- System restore points and volume shadow copy exploitation.
- In-depth windows NTFS file system examination to detect APT groups and advanced insider threats.
- Detection of anti-forensics and adversary hiding techniques.
- Discovery of unknown malware on a system.
- Adversary threat intelligence development, indicators of compromise, and usage.
- Cyber-kill chain strategies.
- Step-by-step tactics and procedures to respond to and investigate intrusion cases.
Course Syllabus
FOR508.1: Enterprise Incident Response
Chad Tilbury
Fri Dec 12th, 2014
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Overview
Incident responders should be armed with the latest tools, memory analysis techniques, and enterprise incident response methodologies in order to identify, track, and contain advanced adversaries and remediate incidents. Incident response and forensic analysts must be able to scale their response across thousands of systems in their enterprise. Enterprise scanning techniques are now a requirement to track targeted attacks by an APT group or organized crime syndicates that can rapidly propagate through hundreds of systems. Responding to this many 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 and may allow them to quickly adapt and exfiltrate sensitive information in response. This section examines the six-step incident response methodology as it applies to an enterprise's response during a targeted attack. We will show the importance of developing security intelligence in affecting the adversaries "kill chain." We will also demonstrate live response techniques and tactics that can be applied on a single system and across the entire enterprise.
Students will receive a full six-month license of F-Response Enterprise Edition, enabling each student to use his or her own workstation or the SIFT workstation to connect to hundreds or thousands of systems in the enterprise. This capability is used to benchmark, facilitate, and demonstrate new incident response technologies that enable a responder to look for indicators of compromise across the entire enterprise.
Exercises
- SIFT Workstation 3 orientation
- Mounting remote/local drives via SIFT Workstation
- Remote enterprise memory acquisition using F-Response Enterprise
- Remote enterprise response and analysis using F-Response Enterprise
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
Topics
Real Incident Response Tactics
- Preparation: Key tools, techniques, and procedures an incident response team needs to properly respond to intrusions
- Identification: Proper scoping of an incident and detecting all compromised systems in the enterprise
- Containment: Identification of exactly how the breach occurred and what was stolen
- Eradication: Determining the 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
- Lessons Learned
Threat and Adversary Intelligence
- Importance of Cyber Threat Intelligence
- Understanding the "Kill Chain"
- Threat Intelligence Creation and Use During Incident Response
- Incident Response Team Life-Cycle Overview
- Incident and Malware Detection - All Activity across a Specific System
- Enterprise Incident Response/Forensics - Specific Activity across All Systems
Remote and Enterprise Incident Response
- Remote System Access in the Enterprise
- Remote System Host-Based Analysis
- Scalable Host-Based Analysis (one analyst examining 1,000 systems)
- Remote Memory Analysis
Windows Live Incident Response
- Live Incident Response Kit and Tools
- Volatile Data Collection
- Comparison of Key Data Collected via Live Collection, Static Drive, and Memory Analysis Techniques
- Auto-Start Malware Persistence Checks
- Trusted Windows Command Shells
- Finding Evil: Automating Collection across the Enterprise
- Remote Command Shell Usage - PsExec
- Incident Response Using Powershell
- Live Response Key Tools
FOR508.2: Memory Forensics in Incident Response
Chad Tilbury
Sat Dec 13th, 2014
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Overview
Now a critical component of many incident response teams that detect advanced threats in their organization, memory forensics has come a long way in just a few years. It can be extraordinarily effective at finding evidence of worms, rootkits, and advanced malware used by an APT group of attackers. Memory analysis traditionally was solely the domain of Windows internals experts, but the recent development of new tools makes it accessible today to anyone especially incident responders. Better interfaces, documentation, and built-in detection heuristics have greatly leveled the playing field. This section will introduce some of the newest free tools available and give you a solid foundation in adding core 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
- Find APT "beacon" malware over common ports that targeted attackers use to access command and control (C2) channels
- Find residual command-line input through scanning strings in memory and by extracting command history buffers
- Analysis of memory from infected systems:
- Stuxnet
- TDL3/ TDSS
- 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 Forensics Analysis Process
- 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
- Memory Analysis Techniques with Redline
- Advanced Memory Analysis with Volatility
- Code Injection, Malware, and Rootkit Hunting in Memory
- Perform In-memory Windows Registry Examinations
- Extract Typed Adversary Command Lines
- Investigate Windows Services
- Find and Dump Cached Files from RAM
- Dumping Hashes and Credentials from Memory
Memory Analysis Tools
- Rekall
- Volatility
- Redline
- MoonSols Windows Memory Toolkit
FOR508.3: Timeline Analysis
Chad Tilbury
Sun Dec 14th, 2014
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Overview
Timeline analysis will change the way you approach digital forensics and incident response. . . forever.
Learn advanced incident response techniques uncovered via timeline analysis directly from the developers who pioneered timeline analysis tradecraft. Temporal data is located everywhere on a computer system. File system 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 and forensics technique to solve complex cases. New timeline analysis frameworks provide the means to conduct simultaneous examinations of a multitude of time-based artifacts. 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 and forensic cases. Exercises will not only show analysts how to create a timeline, they will also introduce key methods to help you use those timelines effectively in your cases.
Exercises
- Using timeline analysis, determine how the breach originally occurred by identifying an APT group beachhead and spear phishing attack
- Target hidden and time-stomped malware and utility-ware 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 footprints left in filesystem times and other temporal-based artifacts
- Learn how to filter system artifact, fil 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 (NTFS vs. FAT)
- Windows Time Rules (File Copy vs. 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
- log2timeline Input Modules
- log2timeline Output Modules
- Filtering the Super Timeline Using l2t_process
- Targeted Super Timeline Creation
- Automated Super Timeline Creation
- Super Timeline Analysis
FOR508.4: Deep Dive Forensics And Anti-Forensics Detection
Chad Tilbury
Mon Dec 15th, 2014
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Overview
In digital forensics, many tools simply require a few mouse clicks to automatically recover data. However, this "push button" mentality has led to many inaccurate results in the past few years. It is also very difficult to identify a skilled attacker solely using antiquated and slow commercial toolsets. This section will free you from relying on "push button" forensic techniques by showing you how the engines of digital forensic tools really work. To understand how to carve out data, it is best to understand how to do it by hand and then show how automated tools should be able to recover the same data. You will learn how to perform string searches looking for specific residue from a file, as well as multiple ways to recover the file data across the layers of the file system. If a file or registry key has been wiped or deleted, this section shows how to use Windows historical artifacts to recover key pieces of the data even if they no longer exist on the system. This knowledge will allow you see beyond most anti-forensic techniques, enabling you to gain the advantage while responding to breaches in your organization and to investigate more advanced subjects actively attempting to hide from you.
Exercises
- Recover data cleared through anti-forensic techniques used by targeted attackers via Volume Shadow Copy and Restore Point analysis
- Extract stream-based data and identify critical artifacts such as domains, IP addresses, and email addresses that were used during the attack
- Find evidence of Poison Ivy use on the compromised system
- Detect and identify key files out of unallocated space including malware, prefetch files, LNK files, and more
- Use filesystem knowledge to detect evidence of anti-forensic and timestomping
- Recover .rar files used by an APT to exfiltrate data from the network
CPE/CMU Credits: 6
Topics
Advanced "Evidence of Execution" Artifacts
- RecentFileCache.bcf /Amcache.hve
- Application Compatibility Cache (ShimCache)
Windows 7/8 Server 2008/2012 Shadow Volume Copy Analysis
- Volume Shadow Copy Data Analysis
- Acquiring Shadow Copy Volume Images
- Raw and Live Shadow Copy Examination Using the SIFT Workstation
- Creating and Analyzing Shadow Volume Timelines
Deep Dive Malware and Anti-Forensic Detection
- Sleuthkit Toolset
File-Based Data Carving
- Carving Key Files from a Compromised System (Malware, .rar Files, Prefetch Files, and Shortcut Files)
- NTFS Filesystem Analysis
- Master File Table (MFT) In Depth
- NTFS System Files
- NTFS Metadata Attributes ($Standard_Information, $Filename, $Data)
- Rules of Windows Timestamps for $StdInfo and $Filename
- NTFS Timestamps
- Resident vs. Nonresident Files
- Alternate Data Streams
- Directory Listings and the $I30 file
- Transaction Logging and the $Logfile and $UsnJrnl
- What Happens When Data is Deleted from a NTFS Filesystem?
Anti-Forensic Detection Methodologies
- MFT Anomalies
- Timeline Anomalies
- Deleted File
- Deleted Registry Keys
- File Wiping
- Clearing Browsing History
- Privacy Cleaner
- Adjusting Timestamps
FOR508.5: Adversary and Malware Hunting
Chad Tilbury
Tue Dec 16th, 2014
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Overview
The adversaries are good. We must be better.
Over the years, we have observed that many incident responders have a challenging time finding malware without pre-built indicators of compromise or threat intelligence gathered prior to a breach. This is especially true in APT group 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.
The section concludes with a step-by-step approach to handling some of the most difficult types of investigations. You will learn the best ways to approach intrusion and spear phishing attacks. You will know the locations you can examine to determine if file wiping occurred. Regardless of the actions hackers might take, they will always leave something that can be traced. This section will consolidate your new skills into a working attack plan to solve these difficult cases.
Exercises
- Find unknown malware across your enterprise by looking for dormant and active malware traces
- Discover 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
Adversary and Malware Hunting
- Rapid Data Triage Analysis
- Cyber Threat Intelligence & Indicators of Compromise (IOC) Searching
- Evidence of Persistence
- Supertimeline Examination
- Packing/Entropy/Executable Anonmaly/Density Checks
- System Logs
- Memory Analysis
- Malware Identification
Methodology to Analyze and Solve Challenging Cases
- Malware/Intrusion
- Spear Phishing Attacks
- Web Application Attacks/SQL Injection
- Advanced Persistent Threat Actors
- Detecting Data Exfiltration
FOR508.6: The APT Incident Response Challenge
Chad Tilbury
Wed Dec 17th, 2014
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
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 week 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 have each incident response team analyzing multiple systems in an enterprise network.
- Each incident response team will be asked to answer the following key questions during the challenge 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 SECURITY 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 (IOC) 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 domain or just the ones affected by the systems compromised?
11. Based on the attacker techniques and tools discovered during 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 in order to detect these intruders in our network again?
Additional Information
Laptop Required
!!IMPORTANT - BRING YOUR OWN SYSTEM CONFIGURED USING THESE DIRECTIONS!!
You can use any 64-bit version of Windows, MAC OSX, or Linux as your core operating system that also can install and run VMware virtualization products. For MACs, we recommend setting up Boot Camp and running Windows directly on your MAC. We have had challenges with VMware Fusion products with several exercises in class.
It is critical that your CPU and operating system support 64-bit so that our 64-bit guest virtual machine will run on your laptop. VMware provides a free tool for Windows and Linux that will detect whether or not your host supports 64-bit guest virtual machines. For further troubleshooting, this article also provides good instructions for Windows users to determine more about the CPU and OS capabilities.
Please download and install VMware Workstation 10, VMware Fusion 6.0, or VMware Player 6.0 or higher versions on your system prior to class beginning. If you do not own a licensed copy of VMware Workstation or Fusion, you can download a free 30-day trial copy from VMware. VMware will send you a time-limited serial number if you register for the trial at their Web site. VMware Player is a free download that does not need a commercial license. Most students find VMware Player adequate for the course.
MANDATORY FOR508 SYSTEM HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:
- CPU: 64-bit Intel x64 2.0+ GHz processor or higher based system is mandatory for this class (Important - Please Read: a 64-bit system processor is mandatory)
- RAM: 4 GB (Gigabytes) of RAM minimum (Note: We strongly recommend 8 GB of RAM or higher to get the most out of the course)
- Host Operating System: Any version of Windows or MAC OSX that also can install and run VMware virtualization products (VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion, or VMware Player) Please note, those with MACs generally do better with Boot Camp installed and running Windows from your MAC. While it works on OSX, some students have experienced problems with VMware Fusion during the course.
- Networking: Wireless 802.11 B, G, or N
- DVD/CD Combo Drive
- USB 2.0 or higher Port(s)
- 200 Gigabyte Host System Hard Drive minimum
- ~100 Gigabytes of Free Space on your System Hard Drive (Note: The free space is needed for the SIFT Workstation VM and the evidence --64 GB--we will be adding to your system)
The student should have the capability to have Local Administrator Access within their host operating system
MANDATORY FOR508 SYSTEM SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS (Please install the following prior to the beginning of the class):
- Install VMware Workstation 10, VMware Fusion 6.0, or VMware Player 6.0 (higher versions are ok)
- Download and install 7Zip
- Microsoft Office (any version) w/Excel installed on your host - Note you can download Office Trial Software online (free for 60 days)
- If you are using an Apple Laptop / MacBook with OSX as your operating system it is required you additionally bring a Windows Virtual System (Win7 or Win8 - Any Version) to class or install bootcamp
OPTIONAL ITEMS TO BRING TO CLASS
- If you attended FOR408, please bring your copy of the FOR408 - Windows SIFT Workstation Virtual Machine as you can use it for the final challenge.
- Bring/install any other forensic tool you feel could be useful (EnCase, FTK, etc). For the final challenge at the end of the course, you can utilize any forensic tool, including commercial capabilities, to help you and your team. If you have any dongles, licensed software, you are free to use it.
If you have additional questions about the laptop specifications, please contact laptop_prep@sans.org.
Who Should Attend
- Incident Response Team Members who regularly respond to complex security incidents/intrusions from an APT group/advanced adversaries and need to know how to detect, investigate, remediate, and recover from compromised systems across an enterprise.
- Experienced Digital Forensic Analysts who want to consolidate and expand their understanding of filesystem forensics, investigating 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 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. Discover how common mistakes can compromise operations on remote systems, and how to avoid them. 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 FOR408 and SEC504 Graduates looking to take their skills to the next level.
Prerequisites
FOR508 (Advanced Forensics and Incident Response) and FOR408 (Computer Forensic Investigations - Windows In-Depth) are designed to be companion courses with skills that build upon one another. While we suggest taking FOR408 prior to FOR508, students will benefit from taking the courses in any order. SANS has a free forensic skill assessment that might be useful to take if you are unsure which class is right for you. The assessment can be found here: http://computer-forensics.sans.org/training/assessment
HANDS-ON APT Enterprise Intrusion Lab
One of the biggest complaints you hear in the digital forensics and incident response community is the lack of realistic intrusion data. Most real-world intrusion data are simply too sensitive to be shared.
Starting over a year ago, the FOR508 course authors created a realistic scenario based on experiences surveyed from a panel of responders who regularly respond to targeted APT attacks. They helped review and guide the targeted attack "script" used to create the scenario. As a result, the authors created an incredibly rich and realistic attack scenario across multiple enterprise systems. This APT attack lab forms the basis for training during the week. The network was set up to mimic a standard "protected" enterprise network using standard compliance checklists:
- Full auditing turned on per recommended FISMA guidelines
- Windows domain controller (DC) set up and configured; DC hardened similar to what is seen in real enterprise networks
- Systems installed with real software on them that is used (Office, Adobe, Skype, Tweetdeck, Email, Dropbox, Firefox, Chrome)
- Fully patched systems (patches are automatically installed)
- Enterprise incident response agents
Enterprise A/V and on-scan capability based on the DoD's Host-Based Security System (HBSS )
- Endpoint Protection Software - Anti-virus, Anti-spyware, Safe surfing, Anti-spam, Device Control, Onsite Management, Host Intrusion Prevention (HIPS)
- Firewall only allows inbound port 25 and outbound ports 25, 80, 443
This exercise and challenge will be used to show real adversary traces across host systems, system memory, hibernation/pagefiles and more.
- Phase 1 - Spearphishing attack and malware C2 beacon installation
- Phase 2 - Lateral movement to other systems, malware utilities download, install additional beacons, and obtain domain admin credentials
- Phase 3 - Search for intellectual property, profile network, dump email, dump enterprise hashes
- Phase 4 - Collect data to exfiltrate and copy to staging system. Archive data using rar and a complex passphrase
- Phase 5 - Exfiltrate rar files from staging server, perform cleanup on staging server.
In the end, we will have created authentic memory captures on each box, network captures, malware samples, in addition to full disk images w/Restore Points (XP) and VSS for (Win7 and Win2008) systems
Why Take This Course?
What you Will Learn
- Applying incident response processes, threat intelligence, and digital forensics to investigate breached enterprise environments from Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, organized crime syndicates, or hackivists.
- Discover every system compromised in your enterprise utilizing incident response tools such as F-Response and digital forensic analysis capabilities in the SIFT Workstation to identify APT beach head and spear phishing attack mechanisms, lateral movement, and data exfiltration techniques.
- Using the SIFT Workstation's capabilities, perform forensic analysis and incident response on any remote enterprise hard drive or system memory without having to image the system first allowing for immediate response and scalable analysis to take place across the enterprise.
- Using system memory and the Volatility toolset to discover active malware on a system, determine how the malware was placed there, and recover it to help develop key threat intelligence to perform proper scoping activities during incident response.
- Detect advanced capabilities such as Stuxnet, TDSS, or APT command and control malware immediately through memory analysis using Redline's Malware Rating Index (MRI) to quickly ascertain the threat to your organization and aid in scoping the true extent of the data breach
- Track the exact footprints of an attacker crossing multiple systems and observe data they have collected to exfiltrate as you track your adversary's movements in your network via timeline analysis using the log2timeline toolset
- Begin recovery and remediation of the compromise via the use of Indicators of Compromise (IOC), Threat Intelligence, and IR/Forensics key scanning techniques to identify active malware and all enterprise systems affected by the breach
- Perform filesystem surgery using the sleuthkit tool to discover how filesystems work and uncover powerful forensic artifacts such as NTFS $I30 directory file indexes, journal parsing, and detailed Master File Table analysis
- Using volume shadow snapshot examinations, XP restore point analysis, and NTFS examination tools in the SIFT Workstation, recover artifacts hidden by anti-forensic techniques such as timestomping, file wiping, rootkit hiding, and privacy cleaning.
- Discover an adversary's persistence mechanisms to allow malware to continue to run on a system after a reboot using command-line tools such as autorunsc, psexec, jobparser, group policy, triage-ir, and IOCFinder.
What You Will Receive
- This course extensively uses the SIFT Workstation 3 to teach incident responders and forensic analysts how to respond to and investigate sophisticated attacks.
- SIFT contains hundreds of free and open source tools, easily matching any modern forensic and incident response commercial tool suite.
- A virtual machine is used with many of the class hands-on exercises.
- Ubuntu LTS Base
- 64 bit base system
- Better memory utilization
- Auto-DFIR package update and customizations
- Latest forensic tools and techniques
- VMware Appliance ready to tackle forensics
- Cross-compatibility between Linux and Windows
- Expanded Filesystem Support (NTFS, HFS, EXFAT, and more)
- F-Response Enterprise
- 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 3 compatible.
- Vendor neutral - works with just about any tool.
- Number of simultaneous examiners = unlimited.
- Number of simultaneous agents deployed = unlimited.
Six-month license allows it to continue to be used and benchmarked in your own environment at work/home.
64 GB Course USB
- 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
"File System Forensic Analysis"
- Best-selling book on deep file system analysis authored by Brian Carrier
SANS DFIR Cheatsheets to Help Use the Tools
You Will Be Able To
- Apply incident response processes, threat intelligence, and digital forensics to investigate breached enterprise environments from Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups, organized crime syndicates, or hackivists.
- Discover every system comprised in your enterprise utilizing incident response tools such as F-Response and digital forensic analysis capabilities in the SIFT Workstation to identify APT beach head and spear phishing at- tack mechanisms, lateral movement, and data exfiltration techniques.
- Using the SIFT Workstation's capabilities, preform forensic analysis and incident response on any remote enterprise hard drive or system memory without having to image the system first, allowing for immediate response and scalable analysis to take place across the enterprise.
- Using system memory and the Volatility toolset to discover active malware on a system, determine how the malware was placed there, and recover it to help develop key threat intelligence to perform proper scoping activities during incident response.
- Detect advanced capabilities such as Stuxnet, TDSS, or APT command and control malware immediately through memory analysis using Redline's Malware Rat- ing Index (MRI) to quickly ascertain the threat to your organization and aid in scoping the true extent of the data breach
- Track the exact footprints of an attacker crossing multiple systems and observe data they have collected to exfiltrate as you track your adversary's movements in your network via timeline analysis using the log2timeline toolset
- Begin recovery and remediation of the compromise via the use of Indicators of Compromise (IOC), Threat Intelligence, and IR/Forensics key scanning techniques to identify active malware and all enterprise systems affected by the breach
- Perform filesystem surgery using the sleuth kit tool to discover how filesystems work and uncover powerful forensic artifacts such as NTFS $I30 directory file indexes, journal parsing, and detailed Master File Table analysis
- Using volume shadow snapshot examinations, XP restore point analysis, and NTFS examination tools in the SIFT Workstation, recover artifacts hidden by anti-forensic techniques such as timestomping, file wiping, rootkit hiding, and privacy cleaning.
- Discover an adversary's persistence mechanisms to allow malware to continue to run on a system after a reboot using command-line tools such as autorunsc, psexec, jobparser, group policy, triage-ir, and IOCFinder.
Press & Reviews
"THE SANS508 COURSE EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS IN EVERY WAY. IT PROVIDED ME THE SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, AND TOOLS TO EFFECTIVELY RESPOND TO AND HANDLE APTS AND OTHER ENTERPRISE WIDE THREATS." -Josh Moulin NSTEC/NNSA/DOE
"THE EXAMPLES IN THE COURSE RELATE TO WHAT I NEED TO KNOW TO DEAL WITH REAL WORLD THREATS." -Tim Weaver, Digital Mtn. Inc.
"I WAS SURPRISED AND AMAZED AT HOW EASY IT IS TO DO MEMORY ANALYSIS AND HOW HELPFUL IT IS." - Brian Dugay, Apple
"THE LEVEL OF DETAIL IS AMAZING. THE METHODOLOGY IS CLEARLY EFFECTIVE AT FINDING PERTINENT ARTIFACTS." - no name
"I'VE TAKEN OTHER NETWORK INTRUSION CLASSES BUT NOTHING THIS IN-DEPTH. THE CLASS IS OUTSTANDING!" -- Craig Goldsmith, FBI
"CUTTING EDGE EXPERTISE TAUGHT BY WORLD CLASS EXPERTS." -Joseph Murray, Deloitte
"I AM A DIFFERENT MAN AS A RESULT OF THIS COURSE." - Travis Farral, XTO Energy
"ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE. TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE IS USEFUL, BUT THIS COURSE PROVIDES THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF A GROWING TREND." -Erik Musick, Arkansas State Police
"THIS IS A GREAT CLASS AND SHOULD BE MANDATORY FOR ANYONE IN THE FORENSIC FIELD. GREAT JOB, ROB!" -Mark Merchant, State of Alaska/State Security Office
"COME PREPARED TO LEARN A LOT." -Todd Black Lee, The Golden 1 Credit Union
"YOU CAN DELETE IT, HIDE IT, RENAME IT, BUT WE WILL FIND IT." -Edward Fuller, Department of Defense
"GREAT COURSE! THIS NOT ONLY HELPS ME IN FORENSICS BUT ALSO IN CREATING USE-CASES FOR OUR OTHER INTRUSION ANALYSIS TOOLS." -Joseph Murray, Deloitte
"IT IS HARD TO REALLY SAY SOMETHING THAT WILL PROPERLY CONVEY THE AMOUNT OF MENTAL GROWTH I HAVE EXPERIENCED THIS WEEK." -Travis Farral, XTI Energy
"EXCELLENT COURSE, INVALUABLE HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE TAUGHT BY PEOPLE WHO NOT ONLY KNOW THE TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES, BUT KNOW THEIR QUIRKINESS THROUGH PRACTICAL, REAL-WORLD EXPERIENCE." -John Alexander, US Army
"THIS COURSE (FOR508) REALLY TAKES YOU FROM 0-60 IN UNDERSTANDING THE CORE CONCEPTS OF FORENSICS, ESPECIALLY THE FILE SYSTEM." -Matthew Harvey, U.S. Department of Justice
"IF YOU NEED TO TRACK DOWN WHAT HAPPENED IN YOUR ENVIRONMENTS, THIS IS A MUST HAVE COURSE!" -Fran Moniz, American National Insurance
"THE CAPSTONE EXERCISE IS AWESOME, PUTS TRACKING THE APT INTO PRACTICE." -Gavin Worden, SD-LECC
"BEST FORENSICS TRAINING I'VE HAD SO FAR. I THOUGHT THE SOME OTHERS COURSES WERE GREAT BUT 508 IS A LOT MORE CURRENT AND APPLICABLE TO THE REAL WORLD! EXCELLENT COURSE AND INSTRUCTOR OVERALL!" -Marc Bleicher, Bit9
"THE MORE I PROGRESS THROUGH THE COURSE, THE MORE I REALIZE JUST HOW MUCH CAPACITY THERE IS TO PRODUCE ANSWERS TO TOUGH QUESTIONS. WHERE I MIGHT NOT HAVE FOUND SUPPORTING EVIDENCE IN PAST CASES, I FEEL I HAVE SO MANY NEW AVENUES TO EXPLORE. A REAL EYE-OPENER. I ALSO GREATLY APPRECIATE THE FOCUS ON INCIDENT RESPONSE." - Dave Ockwell-Jenner, SITA
"I HAVE ALREADY USED SEVERAL OF THE TOOLS/TECHNIQUES FROM THE COURSE WITH PAST-CASE EVIDENCE TO UNCOVER THINGS I DID NOT PREVIOUSLY KNOW." - Dave Ockwell-Jenner, SITA
"MY SOC FOCUSES A LOT ON INCIDENT RESPONSE AND QUICK FORENSICS, SO THE COURSE MATERIAL IS EXTREMELY VALUABLE." - Anonymous
"I ROUTINELY PERFORM LIVE MEMORY CAPTURES AND HAVE GONE THROUGH THEM LOOKING FOR THE OBVIOUS, BUT I HAD NO IDEA, UNTIL FOR508, HOW MANY ARTIFACTS ARE CONTAINED IN RAM." - M Scott Saul, FBI
"THE SANS INSTITUTE IS CURRENTLY THE LEADER IN THE COMMERCIAL IR AND COMPUTER FORENSIC TRAINING MARKET. THEY HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF QUALITY COURSES." - Luttgens, Jason; Pepe, Matthew; Mandia, Kevin. Incident Response & Computer Forensics, Third Edition - July 2014
"YOU HAVE THE CONTENT WHICH IS CLOSE TO REAL WTHEN YOU HAVE THE INSTRUCTOR THAT GOES INTO A LOT OF REAL WORLD EXAMPLES. JUST GREAT." -Anonymous
"FOR508 COMBINED WITH FOR572 SHOWS A COMPLETE PICTURE FROM DISK SIDE TO NETWORK SIDE." - Dow Shirley, Energy Solutions
"MOST IN-DEPTH, STATE OF THE ART IR COURSE I CAN IMAGINE. FIRST TIME I THINK DEFENSE CAN ACTUALLY GAIN AN ADVANTAGE. THANK YOU." - Kai Thomsen, AUDI AG
FULL REVIEW AND WRITE UP OF FOR508 BY DAVID NIDES, KPMG-
PRESS ARTICLES ABOUT THE NEW FOR508 COURSE:
- CSO ONLINE: Advanced Persistent Threats can be beaten, says expert Detection is key, but how you respond to APTs is equally important
- SECURITY BISTRO: Understanding and defeating APT, Part 1: Waking up to the who and why behind APT
- SECURITY BISTRO: Understanding and defeating APT, Part 2: Fighting the 'forever war' against implacable foes
Should I take SANS 408 or 508? (part 1) - http://digitalforensicstips.com/category/training_reviews/
SANS 508 Compared to 408 Part Two (part 2) - http://digitalforensicstips.com/2013/04/sans-508-compared-to-408-part-two-plus-a-side-of-610/
Author Statement
"In describing the advanced persistent threat (APT) and advanced adversaries, many experts have said, 'There are people smarter than you, who have more resources than you, and who are coming for you. Good luck with that.' They were not joking. The results over the past several years clearly indicate that hackers employed by nation-states and organized crime are racking up success after success. The APT has compromised hundreds of organizations. Organized crime organizations using botnets are exploiting ACH fraud daily. Similar groups are penetrating banks and merchants, stealing credit card data. Fortune 500 companies are beginning to detail data breaches and hacks in their annual stockholder reports.
"In other words, the enemy is getting better and bolder, and their success rate is impressive."
"We can stop them, but in order to do so we need to field more sophisticated incident responders and digital forensics investigators. We need lethal digital forensics experts who can detect and eradicate advanced threats immediately. A properly trained incident responder could be the only defense your organization has left during a compromise. Forensics 508: Advanced Digital Forensic Analysis and incident Response is crucial training for you to become the lethal forensicator who can step up to these advanced threats. The enemy is good. We are better. This course will help you become one of the best."
- Rob Lee
