Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

In this blog, I’ll share a few NetOps observations of the Black Hat network that I made during my time serving in the Black Hat Network Operations Center (NOC). My hope in doing so is to spark some ideas on how you can use an existing tool like Zeek for a new purpose. These insights were particularly revealing, despite not being linked to any security incidents.

I hate spiders, a lot. But I really hate the idea of a Scattered Spider Attack which can jump between environments that you may have believed were segmented at an alarming rate. That is the stuff of real nightmares for networking and security professionals. Keeping up with your security posture isn’t easy. We’re all doing our best, but is it good enough? One CISO we talked to hired a consulting firm to map out their security posture.

Almost a year ago to the day, on December 1 2022, Forescout Vedere Labs published a report detailing several hacktivist operations that targeted critical infrastructure in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other geopolitical developments. Since the most recent chapter in the Hamas-Israel conflict started on October 7, there have been multiple similar claims of attacks from hacktivists taking opposing sides in the conflict.