Black Hat USA 2024: SOC within the NOC

One of many new integrations this yr was with a utility written by certainly one of our SOC staff members. Each safety skilled — particularly SOC analysts and responders — have a collection of “fast lookup” fashion instruments that they use to reply varied questions on artifacts in an investigation. Shodan is a good instance; “given an IP deal with, what companies is that IP offering, and what software program are they utilizing to supply it?”. Paste the IP into Shodan, and you’ll possible get your reply. With the Shodan integration in XDR, you don’t even have to repeat and paste — simply click on the IP after which within the drop down menu, click on the Shodan hyperlink. However there are tons of of such instruments…

Ben took one of many integration server templates that Cisco Safety revealed on Github and modified it to our wants. He then hosted it on his cloud supplier of alternative, added it to our XDR configuration and will add these easy pivots to XDR on the fly. A easy edit of a textual content file on the server and we might soar from any observable to any new related reference web site that anybody had prompt.

Cisco XDR is constructed on the beliefs of an open integration framework, with revealed knowledge fashions, API specs and pattern code obtainable to be modified or used as examples/tutorials (together with precise tutorials at DevNet). This dedication to extensibility permits for modifications such because the above with out requiring any motion from the XDR growth or product groups, permitting clients to tailor XDR to their distinctive wants.

For instance, an IP tried <AndroxGh0st> Scanning Visitors towards the Registration Server, blocked by the Palo Alto Networks firewall.

Investigation of the IP confirmed: It was recognized malicious.

Additionally, the geo location is in RU and recognized affiliated domains. With this info, the NOC management accepted the shunning of the IP.

XDR: Asset visibility

By: Ben Greenbaum

Because the Black Hat community evolves, totally different distributors are given alternatives to convey their merchandise into the toolbox. On account of this ongoing biking, we didn’t have entry to the depth of intelligence beforehand offered by deployment of a Meraki wi-fi infrastructure. Nonetheless, as a result of functionality constructed into XDR Asset Insights to add a customized CSV file of property, we have been in a position to simply operationalize recognized community topography into investigative and response operations.

One of many distinctive challenges of the Black Hat setting is how totally different it’s from a “regular” buyer’s manufacturing community. Now we have just a few hundred units whose safety is our major purpose, however tens of hundreds of unmanaged (and infrequently hostile) units within the native community which we wish to defend from one another and defend the skin world from. This distinctive association very a lot drives house the worth that an EDR brings to an XDR resolution. With out good endpoint visibility, the problem is way higher. The advantage of an open XDR strategy that isn’t an evolution of an present EDR providing is that it may be certainly one of a number of EDRs, however “one” is preferable to none.

Malware Analytics

By: Ben Greenbaum

Cisco Malware Analytics (previously Menace Grid) was once more used because the backend file evaluation and malware detection engine. We supported our companions from CoreLight and Netwitness, with evaluation of recordsdata pulled from clear textual content (convention attendee) and choose encrypted classes (crucial infrastructure).

As standard, the recordsdata present in clear textual content communications have been an excellent indicator of what varieties of knowledge may be anticipated to be leaked by a crowd of safety professionals, and this yr the result rated a stable “much less terrible.” Probably spicy content material included varied PII (names, employers, positions, e mail addresses, and so forth.) from Black Hat receipts and some company e mail attachments. 

And whereas Umbrella did alert us to some wandering infections phoning house, we will say that at the very least no malware was transferred…within the clear.

By: Aditya Sankar

Cisco XDR features a built-in automation functionality referred to as XDR automation. If in case you have heard of Safety Orchestration Automation Response (SOAR), Cisco XDR has the total suite of SOAR options. That features the power to drag-and-drop prebuilt code blocks in a specific sequence to create a customized workflow, executing arbitrary API calls to function one-click response actions and creating guidelines to set off workflows primarily based off a schedule or another standards.

Now we have been utilizing XDR Automate at Black Hat for 3 years to enhance the Cisco companies to our joint buyer, Black Hat, and have carried out a wide range of use circumstances. Nonetheless, this has usually required fairly a little bit of time to study APIs and create a very customized workflow. With the most recent XDR Automation Change, the Change web page is used to seek out, view, set up and uninstall pre-written workflows which have been launched or accepted by Cisco engineers and content material suppliers. Workflows authored by the group have handed a fundamental high quality examine and are supported by the Cisco DevNet Neighborhood on a best-effort foundation. The Exchanges helps allow collaboration between workflow creators and moreover reduces the time it takes for a consumer to expertise worth from XDR automation.

Shout out to Ivan Berlinson, who wrote a workflow to drag menace logs from the Palo Alto Networks API and create Incidents in Cisco XDR. Since Ivan was variety sufficient to publish the workflow to the Change, it was extraordinarily straightforward to import the workflow and get it operational. Putting in a workflow from the change is actually like strolling via a configuration wizard. It features a description of what the workflow does, the required targets and variables, in addition to a contact particular person for assist. Here’s what the workflow seems like within the Change simply earlier than set up.

This workflow requires Automation distant, on-premises digital machine deployed over ESXi to make sure correct connectivity to the Palo Alto Panorama equipment. Shoutout to Matt Vander Horst who helped with the vCenter required to deploy the Automation distant equipment. The Change prompts the consumer to supply values for the required variables and choose the suitable on-premises goal.

Then the workflow is put in and scheduled to run each quarter-hour through an automation rule.

This workflow makes use of the PAN-OS XML API to question for menace logs at this path <?sort=log&log-type=menace&nlogs=50>. This kicks off a search job. As soon as the search job is finished, the workflow retrieves the outcomes and begins parsing the menace logs. A Cisco Menace Intelligence Mannequin (CTIM) sighting is created for every particular person menace log and grouped collectively by inside host IP. Subsequent, a CTIM indicator with the outline of the menace log and a relationship to the corresponding sighting are each created. Lastly, an incident bundle is created with the sighting, relationship and indicator entities and posted to the XDR API. The workflow has logic in-built to examine for duplicate incidents and present indicators.

Here’s what one of many incidents that was created from this automation workflow seems like in Cisco XDR. This gave us as analysts within the SOC an incredible start line for an investigation.

These Palo Alto Community menace logs point out a listing traversal assault that goals to entry recordsdata and directories which can be saved exterior the online root folder. PAN Firewall alerts on listing traversal and accessing </and so forth/passwd> from supply IP 192.168.130.86 on common attendee Wi-Fi to vacation spot IP <104[.]198.XXX.2XX>, which resolves to < yXXXXis[.]social gathering>. This area is marked as suspicious by a number of menace intelligence sources and has a medium danger rating of 72 in Cisco Umbrella. The host then proceeded to obtain recordsdata from <file://var/run/secrets and techniques/> host with fundamental authentication within the HTTP POST header. This exercise was then correlated to comparable classroom exercise, however the host MAC deal with was not seen in any school rooms.

The vacation spot IP exhibits unknown with XDR menace intelligence, however the area it resolves to appears to be suspicious and it’s hosted within the Russian Federation, as seen within the Umbrella console. Listed below are extra particulars offered by the Corelight staff in our energetic Menace Searching Slack chanel: HTTP POST exercise to the vacation spot in query exhibits a fundamental authentication token that decodes to <admin:p034BHUSA43op> which does appear to be it’s getting used for Black Hat coaching because it says BHUSA within the password. Nonetheless, this supply host’s MAC deal with was not seen in any school rooms, solely on the final Wi-Fi.

We did discover the host making comparable queries like <uri = /token$/ uri=/kubernetes/>, which have been seen within the Superior Infrastructure Hacking class, however it isn’t sufficient to attribute this exercise to a category. Anyhow, this conduct usually shouldn’t be seen on the final Wi-Fi. On this situation, we didn’t take any motion of blocking the vacation spot IP or forcing a captive portal for host IP because the Black Hat community goals to observe for assault and abuse, however not block malicious site visitors.

Ivan Berlison additionally offered one other workflow to supply an XDR Incident when a file is convicted in Cisco Safe Malware analytics. Corelight, in addition to NetWitness, carve recordsdata off the community and submit them to be detonated in Safe Malware Analytics. Here’s what the XDR incident seems like when a file with a menace rating above 90 is seen:

We had an exquisite time innovating and investigating at Black Hat USA 2024! The XDR automation change was an enormous help in including extra automation capabilities with very minimal customized work. Take a look at AJ Shipley’s weblog on how utilizing Cisco XDR at Black Hat has accelerated our open ecosystem. We’ll be again once more subsequent yr, so lengthy Black Hat!

Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA)

By: Ryan MacLennan

Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA) is a brand new addition to our deployment. As you might know, Cisco acquired Splunk this yr. Due to this new acquisition we labored with our counterparts in Splunk to get their SAA product provisioned for our use at Black Hat. SAA is a file and URL evaluation platform just like Safe Malware Analytics. SAA makes use of a complicated set of standards to find out which engine could be greatest suited to evaluation — like internet analyzer, static file evaluation, e mail analyzer, signature engines and/or the sandbox. Whereas the product is able to dynamic and static evaluation, we selected to do solely static evaluation for our use at Black Hat.

What is actually highly effective in regards to the evaluation of SAA is its assault chain following functionality: The flexibility to intelligently decide how a human would click on on gadgets in a webpage. It is going to observe hyperlinks, obtain recordsdata and analyze extra indicators from community connections, recognized malicious recordsdata, an unknown malicious file that’s analyzed on the fly, phishing domains and extra. It is going to observe a logical movement like a human to find out the trail to compromise. This was fascinating to see in the environment because it confirmed the trail from a file, the hyperlinks present in it, to totally different web sites, and every step of the trail had a screenshot for us to observe alongside.

For instance, we’ve got a PDF that was submitted to SAA. It discovered hyperlinks within the file and adopted them to see if they’d result in one thing malicious. I’ve blocked out many of the URLs, however we will see the way it went via the PDF knowledge and clicked on the hyperlinks to seek out out the place it might go.

After SAA did its factor, we might take a look at the file in query and the screenshots that it took. We discovered that this file was the information utilized in a coaching room and every hyperlink was a reference to an article, a coaching useful resource (self-hosted and official), or different informational sources a pupil may have.

We have been in a position so as to add this integration with the assistance of our accomplice Corelight. We talked to them on day one and so they have been excited to get a brand new integration developed with SAA. A number of hours later, we had an integration with them. This was a tremendous instance of how all of us come collectively to make the NOC higher at Black Hat yearly.

Umbrella DNS

By: Christian Clasen and Justin Murphy

If in case you have learn the earlier Black Hat NOC/SOC reviews, you realize that in 2023, we made a change to the DNS design. In prior conferences, we assigned inside forwarders to shoppers through DHCP, however didn’t pressure their use. Primarily, attendees might use any DNS resolvers they selected, and we didn’t intervene. The change we carried out was to start forcibly redirecting DNS site visitors to the on-premises DNS forwarders. You possibly can see within the statistics above that this modification brought about a big soar in queries processed by Cisco Umbrella — from 54.4 million to 79.3 million.

The steep improve in question depend was not surprising. What was surprising, nonetheless, was a lower in question depend between 2023 and 2024. Whereas we don’t know the exact explanation for this drop, we do have some theories and methods we will check them going ahead.

One doable clarification is the prevalence of encrypted DNS protocols. In recent times, the business has turned its consideration to the privateness, integrity and authenticity issues inherent within the plain-text DNS protocol. To unravel a few of these points, “last-mile” encryption has turn into a favourite of OS and browser distributors. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT) are solely a few the preferred methods to encrypt DNS between the consumer and the recursive resolver.

Detecting all encrypted DNS may be tough and counting the queries unattainable. It’s because TCP is the chosen transport for DoH and DoT, and this enables the consumer to pipeline a number of queries over one long-lived TCP and TLS session. However what we will typically discover are the “bootstrap” plain-text DNS queries that allow to consumer to seek out the encrypted DNS server. By working a report in Umbrella for the class “DoH and DoT”, we will get a deal with on the preferred of those companies:

The entry for <dns.google> is probably indicative of Android cell units who use this DoT resolver by default. The depend of queries for that specific service is more likely to be larger as a result of the classes on these units are recognized to be short-lived if queries should not frequent sufficient.

On this report, we additionally see “canary” domains reminiscent of <canary.masks.icloud.com> and <use-application-dns.web>. The latter area is utilized by Firefox to detect when it ought to fall again to unencrypted DNS on the community. Extra particulars on how Umbrella interacts with these is written up within the Umbrella assist article for internet browsers and DoH default.

Going ahead, we are going to monitor the statistics of those protocols on the convention networks and see what different info we will collect utilizing the total packet seize capabilities of our companions and the menace searching capabilities of Cisco XDR. You possibly can count on this matter to be expanded on within the subsequent convention report.

One of many major causes to at the very least monitor DNS is to know developments and the way the community at Black Hat is getting used from a excessive stage. There are lots of insights that may be gained from forcing DNS via a centralized service with intelligence. DNS queries exist for locations that host every part from Malware, Crypto Mining and Phishing to content material classes like Social Media, Finance and Unlawful Actions. Moreover, these domains may be categorized into particular purposes as properly. With the App Discovery report in Umbrella, these domains are grouped by utility, figuring out the potential use of hundreds of purposes. This may very well be internet apps or different desktop/cell apps.

As at all times, we proceed to see an increase in app utilization at Black Hat:

• BHUSA 2019: ~3,600
• BHUSA 2021: ~2,600
• BHUSA 2022: ~6,300
• BHUSA 2023: ~7,500
• BHUSA 2024: ~9,300

This yr there was one stand out Utility Class that has been rising in reputation: Generative AI. It is going to possible be no shock that there are extra attendees and their instruments utilizing Generative AI. Now we have gone from seeing it as a footnote in logs to reporting it at RSAC 2024, as we noticed 80 totally different Generative AI instruments getting used.

Examine this to Black Hat 2024, just some months later, the place the entire quantity has jumped to 194.

This doesn’t look like only a distinction in conferences, however relatively a rising development and acceptance of those instruments.

Community Assurance

By: Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy

The ThousandEyes deployment launched at Black Hat USA 2023 one yr in the past. At that convention, we spent many lengthy shifts growing the configurations, design, and procedures that shaped the idea for our convention protection. The deployment was additional improved and streamlined at Black Hat London and Black Hat Asia. At this yr’s Black Hat USA 2024, we have been able to develop our protection considerably whereas persevering with to refine our procedures.

New {hardware}

We added 20 Orange Pi units at Black Hat 2024, along with the 8 Raspberry Pi units we deployed in 2023. We’re nonetheless properly in need of the proverbial thousand eyes, however 28 is much more than 8. We deployed our new fleet of Orange Pi units to observe the wi-fi community, whereas the outdated Raspberry Pi units have been used for wired monitoring of Registration, the NOC and core community units.

Orange Pi configuration

Mike Spicer put in numerous time to develop new configuration and deployment procedures for the Orange Pi units earlier than the convention. We have been in a position to make use of a script and a small native community to configure every Orange Pi with a selected SSID and PSK. As soon as the Pi units have been configured and the goal entry factors have been deployed, every Pi was walked to its goal coaching room the place it might robotically hook up with the entry level (AP) on bootup and start working its scheduled monitoring checks.

Even with the scripting and automation, the configuration stage nonetheless resulted in a mass of wires (pictured above). Deploying the Pi units resulted in additional strolling than the typical attendee would expertise in a convention (not pictured).

Expanded wi-fi protection

With the extra brokers, we have been in a position to deploy to extra Black Hat coaching rooms. The expanded visibility allowed us to catch extra issues earlier than the coaching rooms went reside, together with a misconfigured PSK, an SSID that wasn’t broadcasting and an SSID that broadcast however didn’t have web connectivity. We’d like to have an agent for every coaching room for full visibility and validation heading into the convention, however we’re proud of what we caught and the extra confidence the brokers offered heading into the coaching days.

Because the convention shifted from trainings to the briefing days, we shifted our protection from the most important coaching classes to massive briefing rooms and heavy-traffic areas like the doorway and Enterprise Corridor. Whereas we nonetheless needed to make robust strategic choices about what to cowl and what to not cowl, we have been nonetheless in a position to unfold brokers throughout every ground for common visibility.

Troubleshooting

Our experiences over the previous three conferences had produced well-established troubleshooting procedures and paperwork for the Raspberry Pi units, however the Orange Pi devicess offered contemporary challenges. We had round 25% of our deployed Orange Pi units require troubleshooting in the course of the first 24 hours after deployment, a regarding charge. Log evaluation revealed the wi-fi NIC changing into disconnected and the USB coming into a disconnect loop (the wi-fi NIC is related through USB on the Orange Pi units). The issues with the wi-fi NIC and USB result in a recurring ThousandEyes agent core recordsdata — a tough set of issues.

Nonetheless, these points turned out to be remoted relatively than widespread, and by the top of the convention we had a full wi-fi deployment that was staying up all day and in a single day as properly. For what turned out to be remoted wi-fi issues, we developed troubleshooting procedures and documentation.

Automated ticketing

A brand new ticketing system was rolled out at this convention that may create tickets in Slack primarily based on ThousandEyes knowledge or reported points. Under is a ticket created primarily based on TE alerts for a selected convention room in the course of the first morning of briefings.

The dashboards in ThousandEyes allowed us to supply fast visible info that confirmed which convention rooms have been experiencing the worst latency, alongside a comparability of latency throughout reporting rooms.

The automated reviews behind every dashboard entry offered extra granular info, together with site visitors path and the latency alongside every leg within the site visitors path.

The brand new ticketing system allowed screenshots like those above to be aggregated within the ticket for staff communication and report maintaining.

Troubleshooting WorkflowOn 08/06/2024 at 15:00, we noticed excessive latency to our Inside Umbrella DNS check from the South Seas D Hallway and Enterprise Corridor Brokers. Word that the hyperlinks to the investigation views are offered as hyperlinks.

To slim down the view, we used a dashboard filter to give attention to the 2 Brokers.

This confirmed the excessive latency noticed by the 2 Brokers prolonged throughout a number of checks.

From right here, we drilled down on every check to examine the person check outcomes.

Inside this view, we chosen a number of checks working on each Brokers and in contrast the outcomes.

We noticed that there was a latency spike reported by each Brokers.

To know the reason for the excessive latency, we drilled all the way down to Path Visualization.

We observed the excessive hyperlink delay between the Agent to its gateway. This means a difficulty both between the consumer and AP or between the AP and the server room with the router.

To substantiate the reason for the latency, we visited South Seas D. We ran extra checks to substantiate that the connection expertise match with the outcomes reported by the Agent. Reviewing the room and topology diagrams additional, we discovered that the AP protecting South Seas D was positioned in an adjoining room, and was broadcasting two SSIDs — one for the room it was positioned in, and the opposite for South Seas D. The mixture of the AP placement, the AP servicing two rooms, and the attendee quantity in South Seas D mixed to supply the latency noticed by the Agent. These findings have been shared with the wi-fi staff.

Cell system administration at Black Hat: The function of Meraki Methods Supervisor

By: Dalton Ross

The Black Hat cybersecurity occasion in Las Vegas is famend for its cutting-edge know-how and seamless attendee expertise. A crucial element of this success lies in efficient cell system administration (MDM). Since Black Hat USA 2021, we leveraged Cisco Meraki Methods Supervisor (SM) to deal with a wide range of duties essential to the occasion’s operations. Under is an in depth take a look at how the Meraki SM was deployed and the challenges confronted alongside the way in which.

Important roles of cell units at Black Hat

Cell units have been pivotal in a number of key areas:

1. Registration Kiosk iPad Gadgets (~50 Gadgets): Used at registration kiosks to streamline the attendee check-in course of, the place attendees scan a QR code for immediate badge printing
2. Session Scanning iPad Gadgets (~75 Gadgets): Deployed throughout Black Hat classes to scan registered attendees into every session
3. Lead Retrieval Gadgets (~800 Gadgets): A considerable variety of units have been utilized on the present ground cubicles to swiftly gather sales space customer contact knowledge

Deliberate deployment for Meraki Methods Supervisor

To make sure a easy deployment, our technique included a number of key steps:

1. Pre-State with Apple Automated Machine Enrollment (ADE): Earlier than cargo to the occasion location, all units have been pre-staged utilizing ADE. This allowed units to be configured with a recognized SSID for quicker deployment on web site.
2. Segregated Transport: Gadgets have been to be shipped in three distinct groupings, every akin to one of many roles. This aimed to facilitate swift deployment upon arrival.
3. Dashboard Script for Position Affiliation: A customized dashboard script was ready to leverage the Meraki Dashboard API and simply affiliate enrolled units with their respective roles.
4. Automated Configuration Obtain: As soon as powered up, units have been anticipated to robotically obtain any mandatory configurations or apps associated to their function, making them prepared for fast deployment.
5. Well being Monitoring with Cisco ThousandEyes: ThousandEyes brokers have been to be deployed all through the venue to log SM well being at totally different occasion places.
6. Put up-Occasion Manufacturing facility Reset: After the occasion, all units have been to be manufacturing unit erased earlier than being returned.

Challenges and workarounds

As in life, challenges arose that required fast pondering and adaptation:

• Utility Listing Modifications: A final-minute change to the applying listing for session scanning units was required. Though we initially deliberate to have all configurations prepared beforehand, this surprising change was effectively managed utilizing the Methods Supervisor with just some clicks.
• ThousandEyes Agent Limitations: Since ThousandEyes brokers have been beta SM shoppers, they couldn’t precisely collect connectivity knowledge. This was an anticipated conduct, but it surely posed a problem for efficient monitoring. To beat this, NOC members from Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco Meraki collaborated to hack collectively a proof of idea. Via exhausting work and a number of other iterations, we configured the ThousandEyes brokers to simulate system check-in site visitors, mimicking legitimate SM shoppers.

Deploying Meraki Methods Supervisor at Black Hat was an intricate however rewarding endeavor. Regardless of going through challenges, our staff demonstrated agility and innovation, guaranteeing the occasion’s operations ran easily. The expertise underscored the significance of flexibility and fast drawback fixing in managing large-scale occasions.

By leveraging superior MDM options like Meraki Methods Supervisor, we have been in a position to present a seamless expertise for attendees and exhibitors alike, showcasing the facility of know-how in occasion administration.

We’re happy with the collaboration of the Cisco staff and the NOC companions. Black Hat Europe can be December 9-12, 2024 on the London eXcel Centre.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Cisco NOC staff:

• Cisco Safe: Christian Clasen, Matt Vander Horst, Aditya Sankar, Ben Greenbaum, Ryan Maclennan, Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy, with distant assist by Jessica (Bair) Oppenheimer
• Meraki Methods Supervisor: Dalton Ross, with distant assist by Paul Fidler and Connor Laughlin. Search for their report on The Meraki Weblog.

Additionally, to our NOC companions:

• NetWitness (particularly Alessandro Zatti)
• Palo Alto Networks (particularly Jason Reverri and James Holland)
• Corelight (particularly Dustin Lee)
• Arista (particularly Jonathan Smith)
• Lumen and your entire Black Hat/Informa Tech employees (particularly Grifter ‘Neil Wyler,’ Bart Stump, Steve Fink, James Pope, Mike Spicer, Sandy Wenzel, Heather Williams, Jess Stafford and Steve Oldenbourg)

About Black Hat

Black Hat is the cybersecurity business’s most established and in-depth safety occasion collection. Based in 1997, these annual, multi-day occasions present attendees with the most recent in cybersecurity analysis, growth, and developments. Pushed by the wants of the group, Black Hat occasions showcase content material immediately from the group via Briefings displays, Trainings programs, Summits, and extra. Because the occasion collection the place all profession ranges and tutorial disciplines convene to collaborate, community, and talk about the cybersecurity matters that matter most to them, attendees can discover Black Hat occasions in america, Canada, Europe, Center East and Africa and Asia.

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