Book Image

Cloud Forensics Demystified

By : Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee
Book Image

Cloud Forensics Demystified

By: Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee

Overview of this book

As organizations embrace cloud-centric environments, it becomes imperative for security professionals to master the skills of effective cloud investigation. Cloud Forensics Demystified addresses this pressing need, explaining how to use cloud-native tools and logs together with traditional digital forensic techniques for a thorough cloud investigation. The book begins by giving you an overview of cloud services, followed by a detailed exploration of the tools and techniques used to investigate popular cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Progressing through the chapters, you’ll learn how to investigate Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and containerized environments such as Kubernetes. Throughout, the chapters emphasize the significance of the cloud, explaining which tools and logs need to be enabled for investigative purposes and demonstrating how to integrate them with traditional digital forensic tools and techniques to respond to cloud security incidents. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to handle security breaches in cloud-based environments and have a comprehensive understanding of the essential cloud-based logs vital to your investigations. This knowledge will enable you to swiftly acquire and scrutinize artifacts of interest in cloud security incidents.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Cloud Fundamentals
6
Part 2: Forensic Readiness: Tools, Techniques, and Preparation for Cloud Forensics
10
Part 3: Cloud Forensic Analysis – Responding to an Incident in the Cloud

Misconfigured virtual machine instances

One of the prevalent entry points for attackers in cloud environments is through misconfigured virtual machine instances. The beauty of the cloud is how rapid the deployment of VMs can be. However, the downside of this is that configurations may be overlooked or improperly set. Such oversights grant threat actors unintended access or provide them with information to further their intrusions. Let’s look at some common misconfigurations.

Unnecessary ports left open

Open ports function as communication endpoints for virtual machines. Each port allows a specific type of communication, such as HTTP traffic on port 80. However, leaving unused or unnecessary ports open expands the potential attack surface. An attacker can exploit open ports by identifying vulnerabilities associated with the services listening on these ports. It’s essential to ensure that only required ports are open and accessible.

Here are some indicators to...