A extreme cyberattack leveraging TrickBot malware compromises an organization’s defenses, resulting in vital monetary losses. This was not on account of a mere oversight, however quite a consequence of insufficient endpoint visibility. With efficient monitoring and real-time insights into endpoint exercise, the risk might have been detected and neutralized earlier than inflicting in depth injury. This underscores the essential significance of complete endpoint telemetry.
What’s endpoint telemetry?
In cybersecurity, endpoint telemetry refers to knowledge collected by monitoring actions on endpoint units, resembling computer systems and servers. This knowledge is essential for risk detection, incident response, and enhancing the general cybersecurity posture by providing enhanced visibility.
Essential position of endpoint telemetry
Visibility is essential to stopping complicated cyberattacks early within the kill chain. In case you can’t see it, you may’t cease it. With regards to stopping an assault, it’s at all times higher to take action within the early phases of the assault chain.
In response to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, which is usually utilized by cybersecurity professionals, most enterprise-level assaults — resembling Turla, ToddyCat, and WizardSpider (TrickBot) — contain varied phases, often known as techniques, which attackers can use in several sequences to attain their goals.
The MITRE framework catalogs an inventory of methods and sub-techniques that attackers use to hold out every of those techniques on an endpoint. To detect malicious habits early within the assault chain, it’s important to watch the endpoint and report actions that resemble these generally used methods. Capturing telemetry is due to this fact very important for figuring out these methods and intercepting assaults at an early stage. Endpoint telemetry additionally serves as an important knowledge supply for XDR, enhancing its potential to detect, analyze and reply to safety threats throughout a number of environments.
Minimizing false positives
One of many major challenges in utilizing telemetry to detect threats is managing false positives. Attackers usually exploit Dwelling Off-the-Land (LOL) binaries — official instruments and utilities that include working techniques — to execute varied methods or sub-techniques. For instance, the Lazarus Group, a extremely refined and infamous state-sponsored hacking group, is thought to make use of Scheduled Duties or PowerShell in the course of the Persistence or Execution phases of an assault. Lazarus incessantly employs these methods as a part of their broader Dwelling Off the Land (LOL) technique, which permits them to take advantage of official system instruments and binaries to mix in with common community exercise and keep away from detection by conventional safety options.
Since these actions mimic benign actions generally carried out in enterprises, detecting them incorrectly can result in a excessive fee of false positives. We might handle this problem is by correlating the occasions and telemetry triggered round that exercise or by utilizing an XDR (Prolonged Detection and Response) device, resembling Cisco XDR. Cisco XDR correlates telemetry from varied detection sources to generate high-fidelity incidents, enhancing the power to determine and cease complicated assaults whereas lowering the probability of false positives.
Capturing telemetry utilizing Cisco Safe Endpoint
Cisco Safe Endpoint is an Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) device that collects and data a variety of endpoint telemetry. It employs varied detection engines to investigate this telemetry, determine malicious habits and set off detection occasions. We constantly fine-tune the product to seize extra telemetry and detect occasions of various criticality throughout totally different phases of the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Moreover, occasions from Cisco Safe Endpoint are ingested into the Cisco XDR analytics engine and correlated with different knowledge sources to generate high-fidelity incidents inside Cisco XDR.
Let’s discover the detection occasions captured by Cisco Safe Endpoint within the Occasions view, together with the telemetry recorded within the Machine Trajectory view. We’ll give attention to how Safe Endpoint offers visibility into the early phases of an assault and its functionality to cease complicated threats earlier than they escalate.
Exploring detection occasions
All of the occasions used on this instance might be considered from Administration->Occasions web page of the Cisco Safe Endpoint console.
Execution Tactic and Detection
Execution techniques signify the methods used to run attacker’s payload on a compromised endpoint to carry out some malicious actions.
Instance methods embrace:
- Encoded PowerShell — Utilizing obfuscated PowerShell instructions to execute code.
- Home windows Administration Instrumentation (WMI) — Leveraging WMI for executing instructions and scripts.
- Native APIs — Using built-in system APIs for code execution.
The screenshot under shows an occasion generated by the Behavioral Safety engine of Safe Endpoint, which detected a PowerShell command utilizing “Invoke-Expression” and triggered by “sdiagnhost.exe”.
Persistence Tactic and Detection
Persistence refers to techniques that permit malicious payloads to stay on a compromised system and proceed their operations even after reboots or different system adjustments. These methods allow the malware to keep up communication with a command-and-control server and obtain additional directions.
Instance methods embrace:
- Create or Modify System Course of — This method entails creating new providers or modifying current providers to execute malicious code at startup or at particular intervals.
- Registry Modifications — Altering registry entries to make sure malicious packages execute on system startup.
- Creating Scheduled Duties — Establishing duties that run at specified occasions or intervals.
The screenshot under illustrates an occasion generated when a brand new service was created to run malware at startup.
Protection Evasion Tactic and Detection
Protection Evasion entails methods utilized by attackers to cover their malicious payloads and keep away from detection by safety techniques. The objective is to make it troublesome for safety instruments and analysts to determine and cease the assault.
Instance methods embrace:
- Course of Hollowing — It’s a method the place a suspended course of is created, and a malicious code is injected into the handle area of that suspended course of.
- Impair Defenses — Modify sufferer’s atmosphere and disable defenses, like turning off anti-virus, firewall or occasion logging mechanisms.
- Masquerading — Making malicious information or actions seem official to evade detection.
The screenshot under reveals the Course of Hollowing method captured by the Exploit Prevention engine in the course of the Protection Evasion stage of the assault.
Discovery Tactic and Detection
Discovery refers back to the totally different methods adversaries use to assemble details about the sufferer’s atmosphere.
Instance methods embrace:
- Course of Discovery — Enumerating operating processes to search out useful or susceptible targets.
- System Info Discovery — Gathering particulars in regards to the working system, {hardware} and put in software program.
- System Community Configuration Discovery — Figuring out the community settings, interfaces and related units.
The screenshot under depicts the occasion Safe Endpoint generated on observing “tasklist.exe” utilization within the endpoint in a suspicious method, run by “rundll32.exe”, and mapping the habits to Course of Discovery method.
Machine trajectory telemetry
Cisco Safe Endpoint (CSE) captures two sorts of telemetry below Machine Trajectory view: Exercise Telemetry and Behavioral Telemetry.
Exercise Telemetry
By filtering out undesirable knowledge, this telemetry reduces noise and provides clear visibility into endpoint actions, together with processes, parent-child course of relationships, triggered occasions, information and community exercise, whether or not malicious or benign.
The screenshot under reveals the Machine Trajectory view within the Safe Endpoint console, with the Exercise Telemetry captured.
Behavioral Telemetry
This particular kind of telemetry is displayed within the Machine Trajectory view after evaluation by the detection engine. It’s triggered when a malicious exercise is linked to an in any other case benign exercise, offering further context to assist distinguish between benign and malicious actions.
The screenshot under reveals the Machine Trajectory view within the Safe Endpoint console, highlighting Behavioral Telemetry recognized by the detection engine. On this instance, the rundll32.exe course of is related to suspicious community exercise.
The telemetry particulars captured by Safe Endpoint on this view present essential context across the noticed exercise, permitting safety groups to rapidly assess the scenario. This enriched info not solely aids in figuring out the character and intent of the exercise but additionally empowers groups to conduct extra thorough and efficient investigations. By providing a deeper understanding of potential threats, Safe Endpoint helps to streamline the risk detection course of, lowering response occasions and enhancing general safety posture.
Conclusion
The exploration of Cisco Safe Endpoint’s detection occasions and telemetry highlights the facility of visibility in early assault detection. By monitoring and analyzing endpoint habits, organizations acquire useful insights into potential threats, permitting them to detect and reply to assaults at their earliest phases. This enhanced visibility is essential to safeguarding essential techniques and fortifying defenses towards evolving cyber threats.
References
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