The Uptycs Threat Intelligence team is responsible for providing a high quality, curated, and current Threat Intelligence feed to the Uptycs product. In order to deliver the threat feed, the team evaluates every single alert that is seen by our customers, and investigates the alert as feedback into the threat feed curation process. Recently we observed a malicious domain alert from a customer. The out-of-the-box alert description indicated that it belonged to the OSX/Shlayer malware family. We were quickly able to query Uptycs threat intelligence to find that the domain first appeared on February, 2019 and was reported by multiple threat intel sources. Once the threat was validated, we dove into deeper investigation to understand the threat surface and risk. This post walks through the steps and techniques we performed to analyze data that had been collected via osquery, and aggregated in Uptycs.
Detecting security threats is difficult work, now more so than ever. Our threat intelligence tools are playing catch-up with increasingly sophisticated attack vectors, including polymorphic malware, quick-turn domains and other turn-on-a-dime attack tactics.
It only makes sense to assume that sooner or later your company will have to handle a security incident and the subsequent recovery from any damage caused.
Creating an incident response policy before an incident occurs can help you minimize risk and ensure that you and your team are prepared. By planning your response ahead of time, you will be able to respond faster and more efficiently, and possibly even prevent additional damage from occurring.
Orchestration engines such as Demisto give security professionals the freedom to integrate multiple services into coordinated, automated workflows. Simple REST APIs allow the transfer of data from one application or service to another in a reliable, straight-forward manner. With the appropriate data sources, users are enabled to create workflows and reports for incident investigation and response. In removing the human element, orchestration engines can improve the overall efficiency and consistency of incident response, while freeing up time for other tasks.
Uptycs leverages the open-source osquery agent in order to acquire real-time data about nearly any facet of your infrastructure (more about osquery here). This data is streamed, aggregated, and stored in the Uptycs backend and then made accessible via our API, allowing the integration of Uptycs data with other services.
There's a big disconnect between best practice frameworks and the real-life nitty gritty. Many of these frameworks broadly approach the overarching principles that a robust security program should encompass and why these principles are important; however, they don't usually say specifically what kind of attacker behavior a defender should anticipate when building their security programs, nor do they detail how an attacker would work to thwart those vaulted best practices. Often, that's left up to the security practitioner to suss out themselves in their copious spare time.
Many systems make installing 3rd party software incredibly convenient; from packaging systems and well loved Linux distribution tools like Debian Apt to app stores and per-language repositories. Users are also often allowed to install browser extensions or plugins, which come from their own “store” and are just another type of software. For these reasons, and without forgetting containers, maintaining a software inventory that allows you to identify dangerous packages has become harder to do, but more critical to accomplish.