Hunting Threats Inside Packet Captures

Inspection of packet captures -PCAP- for signs of intrusions, is a typical everyday task for security analysts and an essential skill analysts should develop. Malwares have many ways to hide their activities on the system level (i.e. Rootkits), but at the end, they must leave a visible trace on the network level, regardless if it's obfuscated or encrypted. This paper guides the reader through a structured way to analyze a PCAP trace, dissect it using Bro Network Security Monitor (Bro) to facilitate active threat hunting in an efficient time to detect possible intrusions.