What matters most in a criminal trial? Evidence. Everything depends on the quality and depth of facts deployed to build a case for innocence or guilt. Without compelling evidence, no jury can draw accurate conclusions.
VPN tunnels are like shipping containers in that they are widely used (especially as the pandemic has moved more of the workforce to remote work), and they can be used to carry traffic for legitimate as well as malicious purposes. Establishing a tunnel between corporate offices, remote workers, or partners to transfer data is a legitimate and common use for VPNs.
One of the major causes of alert fatigue for SOCs is a class of alerts that fall in between false positives and useful detections: when an actual attack has been launched, and the detection is working correctly, but the host on the receiving end is not vulnerable, guaranteeing that the attack will fail.
The idea behind the SIEM (and now XDR!) technologies was to provide a single engine at the heart of the SOC, aggregating data, enabling analytics and powering workflow automation. The SIEM would act as one place to train analysts and integrate a range of complementary technologies and processes. Given the efficiency that comes from centralization, I was surprised to hear that a growing number of defenders are actually using two SIEMs. Why is that?
Given that active cyber warfare has broken out alongside Russia’s active invasion of Ukraine - from Russian wiper malware to Anonymous hacking Russian state TV - CISA’s recent “Shields Up” memo is a timely insight into some of the TTPs defenders of critical infrastructure should be keeping an eye out for. Let’s break down the four key areas outlined in the memo and examine ways they can be detected with network data.
