Book Image

Practical Threat Intelligence and Data-Driven Threat Hunting

By : Valentina Costa-Gazcón
Book Image

Practical Threat Intelligence and Data-Driven Threat Hunting

By: Valentina Costa-Gazcón

Overview of this book

Threat hunting (TH) provides cybersecurity analysts and enterprises with the opportunity to proactively defend themselves by getting ahead of threats before they can cause major damage to their business. This book is not only an introduction for those who don’t know much about the cyber threat intelligence (CTI) and TH world, but also a guide for those with more advanced knowledge of other cybersecurity fields who are looking to implement a TH program from scratch. You will start by exploring what threat intelligence is and how it can be used to detect and prevent cyber threats. As you progress, you’ll learn how to collect data, along with understanding it by developing data models. The book will also show you how to set up an environment for TH using open source tools. Later, you will focus on how to plan a hunt with practical examples, before going on to explore the MITRE ATT&CK framework. By the end of this book, you’ll have the skills you need to be able to carry out effective hunts in your own environment.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Section 1: Cyber Threat Intelligence
5
Section 2: Understanding the Adversary
9
Section 3: Working with a Research Environment
14
Section 4: Communicating to Succeed
Appendix – The State of the Hunt

Configuring Winlogbeat

Winlogbeat is an open source tool that runs as a Windows service and is in charge of sending Windows logs to an Elasticsearch or Logstash instance.

Let's go ahead and configure this tool:

  1. Download the Winlogbeat official package from the following URL: https://www.elastic.co/downloads/beats/winlogbeat. Unzip it and move the folder to C:\Program Files\. Rename the folder to Winlogbeat.
  2. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run the following commands:
    cd C:\Users\Administrator 
    cd 'C:\Program Files\Winlogbeat'
    .\install-service-winlogbeat.ps1
  3. If you get an execution policy error, run the following command and select A when prompted:
    Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

    You will get the following output:

    Figure 7.65 – Installing Winlogbeat

  4. Once installed, open Notepad as Administrator to edit the winlogbeat.yml configuration file in C:\Program Files\Winlogbeat:

    Figure 7.66 – Opening Winlogbeat.yml

  5. Scroll to the Outputs...