Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Third Edition

By : Gerard Johansen
5 (1)
Book Image

Digital Forensics and Incident Response - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Gerard Johansen

Overview of this book

An understanding of how digital forensics integrates with the overall response to cybersecurity incidents is key to securing your organization’s infrastructure from attacks. This updated third edition will help you perform cutting-edge digital forensic activities and incident response with a new focus on responding to ransomware attacks. After covering the fundamentals of incident response that are critical to any information security team, you’ll explore incident response frameworks. From understanding their importance to creating a swift and effective response to security incidents, the book will guide you using examples. Later, you’ll cover digital forensic techniques, from acquiring evidence and examining volatile memory through to hard drive examination and network-based evidence. You’ll be able to apply these techniques to the current threat of ransomware. As you progress, you’ll discover the role that threat intelligence plays in the incident response process. You’ll also learn how to prepare an incident response report that documents the findings of your analysis. Finally, in addition to various incident response activities, the book will address malware analysis and demonstrate how you can proactively use your digital forensic skills in threat hunting. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to investigate and report unwanted security breaches and incidents in your organization.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: Foundations of Incident Response and Digital Forensics
6
Part 2: Evidence Acquisition
11
Part 3: Evidence Analysis
17
Part 4: Ransomware Incident Response
20
Part 5: Threat Intelligence and Hunting
Appendix

Conti ransomware case study

One of the most prolific ransomware variants to hit is Conti. There are two aspects to Conti that make it stand out in terms of threat actors. The first of these aspects is that Conti is a RaaS threat actor. This type of threat actor uses an affiliate model where highly skilled recruits are found on hacking forums. From there, they are provided the tools and techniques necessary to execute the initial stage: attack and deploy ransomware. The original coders of the Conti variant are then provided a fee of anywhere between 10 to 30 percent of the ransom.

The second of these is that Conti affiliates will often exfiltrate data, along with encrypting files. This data is then held “hostage” by the affiliate for ransom. If the victim organization did not pay in time, the data would be released. Conti affiliates were even able to use a website both on the internet and on the dark web to post the data.

Before being shut down, the Conti variant...