Book Image

Adversarial Tradecraft in Cybersecurity

By : Dan Borges
Book Image

Adversarial Tradecraft in Cybersecurity

By: Dan Borges

Overview of this book

Little has been written about what to do when live hackers are on your system and running amok. Even experienced hackers tend to choke up when they realize the network defender has caught them and is zoning in on their implants in real time. This book will provide tips and tricks all along the kill chain of an attack, showing where hackers can have the upper hand in a live conflict and how defenders can outsmart them in this adversarial game of computer cat and mouse. This book contains two subsections in each chapter, specifically focusing on the offensive and defensive teams. It begins by introducing you to adversarial operations and principles of computer conflict where you will explore the core principles of deception, humanity, economy, and more about human-on-human conflicts. Additionally, you will understand everything from planning to setting up infrastructure and tooling that both sides should have in place. Throughout this book, you will learn how to gain an advantage over opponents by disappearing from what they can detect. You will further understand how to blend in, uncover other actors’ motivations and means, and learn to tamper with them to hinder their ability to detect your presence. Finally, you will learn how to gain an advantage through advanced research and thoughtfully concluding an operation. By the end of this book, you will have achieved a solid understanding of cyberattacks from both an attacker’s and a defender’s perspective.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Summary

This has been a brief overview of some of the theories and themes we will leverage throughout this book. The rest of this book will be exploring several strategies for both the defense and offense that leverage these themes and principles to gain a strategic advantage. We will examine how these features have already existed for a long time, buried among some of the greatest techniques, tools, and existing strategies.

We have our CIAAAN attributes to help use and evaluate the various security aspects of a technique or strategy. These attributes will help us approximate which strategies are stronger with respect to a certain defense. We have several models, such as kill chains and attack trees, to help us evaluate the reaction correspondence between offense and defense. These models will help visualize the evolution of strategies and decisions at play. We also have our principles, which we can leverage to help guide us to more advantageous techniques and dominant moves...