Book Image

Mastering Cyber Intelligence

By : Jean Nestor M. Dahj
Book Image

Mastering Cyber Intelligence

By: Jean Nestor M. Dahj

Overview of this book

The sophistication of cyber threats, such as ransomware, advanced phishing campaigns, zero-day vulnerability attacks, and advanced persistent threats (APTs), is pushing organizations and individuals to change strategies for reliable system protection. Cyber Threat Intelligence converts threat information into evidence-based intelligence that uncovers adversaries' intents, motives, and capabilities for effective defense against all kinds of threats. This book thoroughly covers the concepts and practices required to develop and drive threat intelligence programs, detailing the tasks involved in each step of the CTI lifecycle. You'll be able to plan a threat intelligence program by understanding and collecting the requirements, setting up the team, and exploring the intelligence frameworks. You'll also learn how and from where to collect intelligence data for your program, considering your organization level. With the help of practical examples, this book will help you get to grips with threat data processing and analysis. And finally, you'll be well-versed with writing tactical, technical, and strategic intelligence reports and sharing them with the community. By the end of this book, you'll have acquired the knowledge and skills required to drive threat intelligence operations from planning to dissemination phases, protect your organization, and help in critical defense decisions.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Cyber Threat Intelligence Life Cycle, Requirements, and Tradecraft
7
Section 2: Cyber Threat Analytical Modeling and Defensive Mechanisms
13
Section 3: Integrating Cyber Threat Intelligence Strategy to Business processes

Adversary analysis techniques

Cyberattack frameworks are important in analyzing the techniques used by adversaries to compromise IT infrastructures. One of the CTI project objectives is to build an effective threat and attack strategy. However, to build such a strategy, the intelligence analyst must understand the fundamental methods used by attackers. We will look at the IBM Xforce framework model approach as an example (https://ibm.co/3xGsYdw). The model provides comprehensive attack knowledge to minimize risk exposure and protect against cyberattacks.

A cyberattack happens in phases that may or may not be sequential, depending on the type of attack, the adversary, and the target system. An adversary attack is divided into two main operations: attack preparation and attack execution.

Adversary attack preparation

During the preparation phase, the adversary identifies the target, sets the objectives, and launches the initial attack to check if the attack is successful or...