Book Image

The Foundations of Threat Hunting

By : Chad Maurice, Jeremy Thompson, William Copeland
Book Image

The Foundations of Threat Hunting

By: Chad Maurice, Jeremy Thompson, William Copeland

Overview of this book

Threat hunting is a concept that takes traditional cyber defense and spins it onto its head. It moves the bar for network defenses beyond looking at the known threats and allows a team to pursue adversaries that are attacking in novel ways that have not previously been seen. To successfully track down and remove these advanced attackers, a solid understanding of the foundational concepts and requirements of the threat hunting framework is needed. Moreover, to confidently employ threat hunting in a business landscape, the same team will need to be able to customize that framework to fit a customer’s particular use case. This book breaks down the fundamental pieces of a threat hunting team, the stages of a hunt, and the process that needs to be followed through planning, execution, and recovery. It will take you through the process of threat hunting, starting from understanding cybersecurity basics through to the in-depth requirements of building a mature hunting capability. This is provided through written instructions as well as multiple story-driven scenarios that show the correct (and incorrect) way to effectively conduct a threat hunt. By the end of this cyber threat hunting book, you’ll be able to identify the processes of handicapping an immature cyber threat hunt team and systematically progress the hunting capabilities to maturity.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1: Preparation – Why and How to Start the Hunting Process
9
Part 2: Execution – Conducting a Hunt
14
Part 3: Recovery – Post-Hunt Activity

Scenario B – external threat hunt

Since the team has been set, the team lead now works with the team to identify the restraints that the CSI personnel will utilize on this threat hunt. Some of the restraints that they determine are listed as follows:

  • No hunting will take place on the operational network due to a lack of experience on CSI's part.
  • Any legal findings will be handed off to the company immediately.
  • Any automated or interactive adversary findings will immediately be identified to the company.
  • All hunt and analysis work will be accomplished with strong chain-of-custody controls.

After the restraints are codified in the plan, the constraints are determined through meetings with stakeholders. Some of these constraints are listed as follows:

  • Communication will remain within privileged channels for the organization.
  • The threat hunt team will get all tools approved by the security team and legal department.
  • All CSI personnel...