How hackers run circles around our defenses.

  • Wednesday, 28 Mar 2018 10:30AM EDT (28 Mar 2018 14:30 UTC)
  • Speaker: Bryce Galbraith

Sun Tzu famously stated, 'know the enemy ', in The Art of War. This timeless truth is as relevant today as it was when written in the 5th century B.C. but how well do defenders really know the enemy?

The enemy loves three things about us:

- Our ignorance

- Our overconfidence

- Our apathy

When they know more than we do, we lose.

When we are overconfident in our defenses, we lose.

When we fail to keep up the fight, we lose.

This presentation will explore several of the Tactics, Tools, and Procedures (TTPs) employed by some of today's most sophisticated attackers to handily bypass the very defenses most organizations rely upon.

You will see how they:

- Bypass strong authentication (e.g., 2FA/MFA, smart cards, biometrics, etc.)

- Bypass Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFW) and perimeter defenses

- Bypass end-point security suites

- Bypass encryption

- Compromise your Windows Active Directory, UNIX environment, virtual machine environment (VME), cloud services (e.g., IaaS, PaaS, SaaS), network and security devices, and virtually every other platform.

'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. '

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Bryce Galbraith is an instructor for our most popular training course, SANS SEC504: Hacker Tools, Techniques, Exploits, and Incident Handling.