Black Hat USA 2024: SOC within the NOC

One of many new integrations this 12 months was with a utility written by one in all our SOC crew members. Each safety skilled — particularly SOC analysts and responders — have a sequence of “fast lookup” type instruments that they use to reply varied questions on artifacts in an investigation. Shodan is a superb instance; “given an IP handle, what providers is that IP offering, and what software program are they utilizing to supply it?”. Paste the IP into Shodan, and you’ll seemingly get your reply. With the Shodan integration in XDR, you don’t even have to repeat and paste — simply click on the IP after which within the drop down menu, click on the Shodan hyperlink. However there are a whole bunch of such instruments…

Ben took one of many integration server templates that Cisco Safety revealed on Github and modified it to our wants. He then hosted it on his cloud supplier of alternative, added it to our XDR configuration and will add these easy pivots to XDR on the fly. A easy edit of a textual content file on the server and we might leap from any observable to any new related reference web site that anybody had steered.

Cisco XDR is constructed on the beliefs of an open integration framework, with revealed information fashions, API specs and pattern code out there to be modified or used as examples/tutorials (together with precise tutorials at DevNet). This dedication to extensibility permits for modifications such because the above with out requiring any motion from the XDR improvement or product groups, permitting prospects to tailor XDR to their distinctive wants.

For instance, an IP tried Scanning Site visitors in opposition to the Registration Server, blocked by the Palo Alto Networks firewall.

Investigation of the IP confirmed: It was identified malicious.

Additionally, the geo location is in RU and identified affiliated domains. With this info, the NOC management accepted the shunning of the IP.

XDR: Asset visibility

By: Ben Greenbaum

Because the Black Hat community evolves, completely different distributors are given alternatives to convey their merchandise into the toolbox. On account of this ongoing biking, we didn’t have entry to the depth of intelligence beforehand supplied by deployment of a Meraki wi-fi infrastructure. Nevertheless, as a result of functionality constructed into XDR Asset Insights to add a customized CSV file of property, we have been in a position to simply operationalize identified community topography into investigative and response operations.

One of many distinctive challenges of the Black Hat setting is how completely different it’s from a “regular” buyer’s manufacturing community. We now have a couple of hundred gadgets whose safety is our major purpose, however tens of 1000’s of unmanaged (and infrequently hostile) gadgets within the native community which we need to shield from one another and shield the surface world from. This distinctive association very a lot drives dwelling the worth that an EDR brings to an XDR resolution. With out good endpoint visibility, the problem is much higher. The good thing about an open XDR method that isn’t an evolution of an present EDR providing is that it may be one in all a number of EDRs, however “one” is preferable to none.

Malware Analytics

By: Ben Greenbaum

Cisco Malware Analytics (previously Menace Grid) was once more used because the backend file evaluation and malware detection engine. We supported our companions from CoreLight and Netwitness, with evaluation of recordsdata pulled from clear textual content (convention attendee) and choose encrypted periods (crucial infrastructure).

As standard, the recordsdata present in clear textual content communications have been indicator of what varieties of knowledge might be anticipated to be leaked by a crowd of safety professionals, and this 12 months the end result rated a strong “much less terrible.” Probably spicy content material included varied PII (names, employers, positions, electronic mail addresses, and many others.) from Black Hat receipts and some company electronic mail attachments. 

And whereas Umbrella did alert us to some wandering infections phoning dwelling, we will say that a minimum of no malware was transferred…within the clear.

By: Aditya Sankar

Cisco XDR features a built-in automation functionality known as XDR automation. When you have heard of Safety Orchestration Automation Response (SOAR), Cisco XDR has the total suite of SOAR options. That features the power to drag-and-drop prebuilt code blocks in a selected sequence to create a customized workflow, executing arbitrary API calls to function one-click response actions and creating guidelines to set off workflows based mostly off a schedule or another standards.

We now have been utilizing XDR Automate at Black Hat for 3 years to enhance the Cisco providers to our joint buyer, Black Hat, and have applied quite a lot of use instances. Nevertheless, this has usually required fairly a little bit of time to study APIs and create a totally customized workflow. With the newest XDR Automation Change, the Change web page is used to search out, view, set up and uninstall pre-written workflows which have been launched or accepted by Cisco engineers and content material suppliers. Workflows authored by the neighborhood have handed a fundamental high quality verify and are supported by the Cisco DevNet Group on a best-effort foundation. The Exchanges helps allow collaboration between workflow creators and moreover reduces the time it takes for a person to expertise worth from XDR automation.

Shout out to Ivan Berlinson, who wrote a workflow to drag risk logs from the Palo Alto Networks API and create Incidents in Cisco XDR. Since Ivan was sort sufficient to publish the workflow to the Change, it was extraordinarily straightforward to import the workflow and get it operational. Putting in a workflow from the change is actually like strolling by way of a configuration wizard. It features a description of what the workflow does, the required targets and variables, in addition to a contact particular person for help. Here’s what the workflow appears to be like like within the Change simply earlier than set up.

This workflow requires Automation distant, on-premises digital machine deployed over ESXi to make sure correct connectivity to the Palo Alto Panorama equipment. Shoutout to Matt Vander Horst who helped with the vCenter required to deploy the Automation distant equipment. The Change prompts the person to supply values for the required variables and choose the suitable on-premises goal.

Then the workflow is put in and scheduled to run each quarter-hour through an automation rule.

This workflow makes use of the PAN-OS XML API to question for risk logs at this path . This kicks off a search job. As soon as the search job is finished, the workflow retrieves the outcomes and begins parsing the risk logs. A Cisco Menace Intelligence Mannequin (CTIM) sighting is created for every particular person risk log and grouped collectively by inside host IP. Subsequent, a CTIM indicator with the outline of the risk log and a relationship to the corresponding sighting are each created. Lastly, an incident bundle is created with the sighting, relationship and indicator entities and posted to the XDR API. The workflow has logic inbuilt to verify for duplicate incidents and present indicators.

Here’s what one of many incidents that was created from this automation workflow appears to be like like in Cisco XDR. This gave us as analysts within the SOC an awesome start line for an investigation.

These Palo Alto Community risk logs point out a listing traversal assault that goals to entry recordsdata and directories which can be saved exterior the net root folder. PAN Firewall alerts on listing traversal and accessing from supply IP 192.168.130.86 on normal attendee Wi-Fi to vacation spot IP <104[.]198.XXX.2XX>, which resolves to < yXXXXis[.]celebration>. This area is marked as suspicious by a number of risk intelligence sources and has a medium danger rating of 72 in Cisco Umbrella. The host then proceeded to obtain recordsdata from host with fundamental authentication within the HTTP POST header. This exercise was then correlated to comparable classroom exercise, however the host MAC handle was not seen in any school rooms.

The vacation spot IP exhibits unknown with XDR risk intelligence, however the area it resolves to appears to be suspicious and it’s hosted within the Russian Federation, as seen within the Umbrella console. Listed here are further particulars supplied by the Corelight crew in our lively Menace Searching Slack chanel: HTTP POST exercise to the vacation spot in query exhibits a fundamental authentication token that decodes to which does seem like it’s getting used for Black Hat coaching because it says BHUSA within the password. Nevertheless, this supply host’s MAC handle was not seen in any school rooms, solely on the final Wi-Fi.

We did discover the host making comparable queries like , which have been seen within the Superior Infrastructure Hacking class, however it’s not sufficient to attribute this exercise to a category. Anyhow, this habits usually shouldn’t be seen on the final Wi-Fi. On this state of affairs, we didn’t take any motion of blocking the vacation spot IP or forcing a captive portal for host IP because the Black Hat community goals to watch for assault and abuse, however not block malicious visitors.

Ivan Berlison additionally supplied one other workflow to supply an XDR Incident when a file is convicted in Cisco Safe Malware analytics. Corelight, in addition to NetWitness, carve recordsdata off the community and submit them to be detonated in Safe Malware Analytics. Here’s what the XDR incident appears to be like like when a file with a risk rating above 90 is seen:

We had a beautiful time innovating and investigating at Black Hat USA 2024! The XDR automation change was an enormous assist in including extra automation capabilities with very minimal customized work. Take a look at AJ Shipley’s weblog on how utilizing Cisco XDR at Black Hat has accelerated our open ecosystem. We’ll be again once more subsequent 12 months, so lengthy Black Hat!

Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA)

By: Ryan MacLennan

Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA) is a brand new addition to our deployment. As you could know, Cisco acquired Splunk this 12 months. Due to this new acquisition we labored with our counterparts in Splunk to get their SAA product provisioned for our use at Black Hat. SAA is a file and URL evaluation platform much like Safe Malware Analytics. SAA makes use of a complicated set of standards to find out which engine can be finest fitted to evaluation — like net analyzer, static file evaluation, electronic mail analyzer, signature engines and/or the sandbox. Whereas the product is able to dynamic and static evaluation, we selected to do solely static evaluation for our use at Black Hat.

What is actually highly effective in regards to the evaluation of SAA is its assault chain following functionality: The power to intelligently decide how a human would click on on gadgets in a webpage. It’ll comply with hyperlinks, obtain recordsdata and analyze further indicators from community connections, identified malicious recordsdata, an unknown malicious file that’s analyzed on the fly, phishing domains and extra. It’ll comply with a logical movement like a human to find out the trail to compromise. This was fascinating to see in our surroundings because it confirmed the trail from a file, the hyperlinks present in it, to completely different web sites, and every step of the trail had a screenshot for us to comply with alongside.

For example, we have now a PDF that was submitted to SAA. It discovered hyperlinks within the file and adopted them to see if they might result in one thing malicious. I’ve blocked out a lot of the URLs, however we will see the way it went by way of the PDF information and clicked on the hyperlinks to search out out the place it will go.

After SAA did its factor, we might have a look at the file in query and the screenshots that it took. We discovered that this file was the information utilized in a coaching room and every hyperlink was a reference to an article, a coaching useful resource (self-hosted and official), or different informational sources a scholar may have.

We have been in a position so as to add this integration with the assistance of our accomplice Corelight. We talked to them on day one they usually have been excited to get a brand new integration developed with SAA. A couple of hours later, we had an integration with them. This was an incredible instance of how all of us come collectively to make the NOC higher at Black Hat yearly.

Umbrella DNS

By: Christian Clasen and Justin Murphy

When you have learn the earlier Black Hat NOC/SOC stories, that in 2023, we made a change to the DNS design. In prior conferences, we assigned inside forwarders to shoppers through DHCP, however didn’t power their use. Basically, attendees might use any DNS resolvers they selected, and we didn’t intervene. The change we applied was to start forcibly redirecting DNS visitors to the on-premises DNS forwarders. You possibly can see within the statistics above that this alteration triggered a big leap in queries processed by Cisco Umbrella — from 54.4 million to 79.3 million.

The steep enhance in question depend was not sudden. What was sudden, nonetheless, was a lower in question depend between 2023 and 2024. Whereas we don’t know the exact reason for this drop, we do have some theories and methods we will check them going ahead.

One attainable clarification is the prevalence of encrypted DNS protocols. Lately, the business has turned its consideration to the privateness, integrity and authenticity issues inherent within the plain-text DNS protocol. To unravel a few of these points, “last-mile” encryption has develop into a favourite of OS and browser distributors. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT) are solely a few the preferred methods to encrypt DNS between the shopper and the recursive resolver.

Detecting all encrypted DNS might be troublesome and counting the queries unattainable. It’s because TCP is the chosen transport for DoH and DoT, and this enables the shopper to pipeline a number of queries over one long-lived TCP and TLS session. However what we will typically discover are the “bootstrap” plain-text DNS queries that allow to shopper to search out the encrypted DNS server. By working a report in Umbrella for the class “DoH and DoT”, we will get a deal with on the preferred of those providers:

The entry for is almost definitely indicative of Android cellular gadgets who use this DoT resolver by default. The depend of queries for that exact service is more likely to be greater as a result of the periods on these gadgets are identified to be short-lived if queries usually are not frequent sufficient.

On this report, we additionally see “canary” domains equivalent to and . The latter area is utilized by Firefox to detect when it ought to fall again to unencrypted DNS on the community. Extra particulars on how Umbrella interacts with these is written up within the Umbrella help article for net browsers and DoH default.

Going ahead, we are going to observe the statistics of those protocols on the convention networks and see what different info we will collect utilizing the total packet seize capabilities of our companions and the risk looking capabilities of Cisco XDR. You possibly can count on this matter to be expanded on within the subsequent convention report.

One of many major causes to a minimum of monitor DNS is to know tendencies and the way the community at Black Hat is getting used from a excessive degree. There are a lot of insights that may be gained from forcing DNS by way of a centralized service with intelligence. DNS queries exist for locations that host every thing from Malware, Crypto Mining and Phishing to content material classes like Social Media, Finance and Unlawful Actions. Moreover, these domains might be categorized into particular purposes as effectively. With the App Discovery report in Umbrella, these domains are grouped by utility, figuring out the potential use of 1000’s of purposes. This could possibly be net apps or different desktop/cellular apps.

As all the time, we proceed to see an increase in app utilization at Black Hat:

• BHUSA 2019: ~3,600
• BHUSA 2021: ~2,600
• BHUSA 2022: ~6,300
• BHUSA 2023: ~7,500
• BHUSA 2024: ~9,300

This 12 months there was one stand out Software Class that has been rising in reputation: Generative AI. It’ll seemingly be no shock that there are extra attendees and their instruments utilizing Generative AI. We now have gone from seeing it as a footnote in logs to reporting it at RSAC 2024, as we noticed 80 completely different Generative AI instruments getting used.

Examine this to Black Hat 2024, just some months later, the place the overall quantity has jumped to 194.

This doesn’t look like only a distinction in conferences, however somewhat a rising development and acceptance of those instruments.

Community Assurance

By: Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy

The ThousandEyes deployment launched at Black Hat USA 2023 one 12 months in the past. At that convention, we spent many lengthy shifts growing the configurations, design, and procedures that shaped the idea for our convention protection. The deployment was additional improved and streamlined at Black Hat London and Black Hat Asia. At this 12 months’s Black Hat USA 2024, we have been able to broaden our protection considerably whereas persevering with to refine our procedures.

New {hardware}

We added 20 Orange Pi gadgets at Black Hat 2024, along with the 8 Raspberry Pi gadgets we deployed in 2023. We’re nonetheless effectively in need of the proverbial thousand eyes, however 28 is much more than 8. We deployed our new fleet of Orange Pi gadgets to watch the wi-fi community, whereas the outdated Raspberry Pi gadgets have been used for wired monitoring of Registration, the NOC and core community gadgets.

Orange Pi configuration

Mike Spicer put in lots of time to develop new configuration and deployment procedures for the Orange Pi gadgets earlier than the convention. We have been in a position to make use of a script and a small native community to configure every Orange Pi with a particular SSID and PSK. As soon as the Pi gadgets have been configured and the goal entry factors have been deployed, every Pi was walked to its goal coaching room the place it will robotically connect with the entry level (AP) on bootup and start working its scheduled monitoring checks.

Even with the scripting and automation, the configuration stage nonetheless resulted in a mass of wires (pictured above). Deploying the Pi gadgets resulted in additional strolling than the common attendee would expertise in a convention (not pictured).

Expanded wi-fi protection

With the extra brokers, we have been in a position to deploy to extra Black Hat coaching rooms. The expanded visibility allowed us to catch extra issues earlier than the coaching rooms went reside, together with a misconfigured PSK, an SSID that wasn’t broadcasting and an SSID that broadcast however didn’t have web connectivity. We’d like to have an agent for every coaching room for full visibility and validation heading into the convention, however we’re proud of what we caught and the extra confidence the brokers supplied heading into the coaching days.

Because the convention shifted from trainings to the briefing days, we shifted our protection from the most important coaching periods to massive briefing rooms and heavy-traffic areas like the doorway and Enterprise Corridor. Whereas we nonetheless needed to make robust strategic selections about what to cowl and what to not cowl, we have been nonetheless in a position to unfold brokers throughout every ground for normal visibility.

Troubleshooting

Our experiences over the previous three conferences had produced well-established troubleshooting procedures and paperwork for the Raspberry Pi gadgets, however the Orange Pi devicess introduced contemporary challenges. We had round 25% of our deployed Orange Pi gadgets require troubleshooting through the first 24 hours after deployment, a regarding price. Log evaluation revealed the wi-fi NIC changing into disconnected and the USB coming into a disconnect loop (the wi-fi NIC is related through USB on the Orange Pi gadgets). The issues with the wi-fi NIC and USB result in a recurring ThousandEyes agent core recordsdata — a troublesome set of issues.

Nevertheless, these points turned out to be remoted somewhat than widespread, and by the top of the convention we had a full wi-fi deployment that was staying up all day and in a single day as effectively. For what turned out to be remoted wi-fi issues, we developed troubleshooting procedures and documentation.

Automated ticketing

A brand new ticketing system was rolled out at this convention that might create tickets in Slack based mostly on ThousandEyes information or reported points. Under is a ticket created based mostly on TE alerts for a particular convention room through the first morning of briefings.

The dashboards in ThousandEyes allowed us to supply fast visible info that confirmed which convention rooms have been experiencing the worst latency, alongside a comparability of latency throughout reporting rooms.

The automated stories behind every dashboard entry supplied extra granular info, together with visitors path and the latency alongside every leg within the visitors path.

The brand new ticketing system allowed screenshots like those above to be aggregated within the ticket for crew communication and document maintaining.

Troubleshooting WorkflowOn 08/06/2024 at 15:00, we noticed excessive latency to our Inner Umbrella DNS check from the South Seas D Hallway and Enterprise Corridor Brokers. Observe that the hyperlinks to the investigation views are supplied as hyperlinks.

To slim down the view, we used a dashboard filter to give attention to the 2 Brokers.

This confirmed the excessive latency noticed by the 2 Brokers prolonged throughout a number of checks.

From right here, we drilled down on every check to verify the person check outcomes.

Inside this view, we chosen a number of checks working on each Brokers and in contrast the outcomes.

We noticed that there was a latency spike reported by each Brokers.

To know the reason for the excessive latency, we drilled all the way down to Path Visualization.

We seen the excessive hyperlink delay between the Agent to its gateway. This means a difficulty both between the shopper and AP or between the AP and the server room with the router.

To substantiate the reason for the latency, we visited South Seas D. We ran further checks to substantiate that the connection expertise match with the outcomes reported by the Agent. Reviewing the room and topology diagrams additional, we discovered that the AP overlaying South Seas D was positioned in an adjoining room, and was broadcasting two SSIDs — one for the room it was positioned in, and the opposite for South Seas D. The mixture of the AP placement, the AP servicing two rooms, and the attendee quantity in South Seas D mixed to supply the latency noticed by the Agent. These findings have been shared with the wi-fi crew.

Cellular system administration at Black Hat: The position of Meraki Methods Supervisor

By: Dalton Ross

The Black Hat cybersecurity occasion in Las Vegas is famend for its cutting-edge know-how and seamless attendee expertise. A crucial part of this success lies in efficient cellular system administration (MDM). Since Black Hat USA 2021, we leveraged Cisco Meraki Methods Supervisor (SM) to deal with quite a lot of duties essential to the occasion’s operations. Under is an in depth have a look at how the Meraki SM was deployed and the challenges confronted alongside the way in which.

Important roles of cellular gadgets at Black Hat

Cellular gadgets have been pivotal in a number of key areas:

1. Registration Kiosk iPad Gadgets (~50 Gadgets): Used at registration kiosks to streamline the attendee check-in course of, the place attendees scan a QR code for fast badge printing
2. Session Scanning iPad Gadgets (~75 Gadgets): Deployed throughout Black Hat periods to scan registered attendees into every session
3. Lead Retrieval Gadgets (~800 Gadgets): A considerable variety of gadgets have been utilized on the present ground cubicles to swiftly acquire sales space customer contact information

Deliberate deployment for Meraki Methods Supervisor

To make sure a clean deployment, our technique included a number of key steps:

1. Pre-State with Apple Automated Machine Enrollment (ADE): Earlier than cargo to the occasion location, all gadgets have been pre-staged utilizing ADE. This allowed gadgets to be configured with a identified SSID for quicker deployment on web site.
2. Segregated Delivery: Gadgets have been to be shipped in three distinct groupings, every similar to one of many roles. This aimed to facilitate swift deployment upon arrival.
3. Dashboard Script for Position Affiliation: A customized dashboard script was ready to leverage the Meraki Dashboard API and simply affiliate enrolled gadgets with their respective roles.
4. Automated Configuration Obtain: As soon as powered up, gadgets have been anticipated to robotically obtain any crucial configurations or apps associated to their position, making them prepared for instant deployment.
5. Well being Monitoring with Cisco ThousandEyes: ThousandEyes brokers have been to be deployed all through the venue to log SM well being at completely different occasion places.
6. Put up-Occasion Manufacturing unit Reset: After the occasion, all gadgets have been to be manufacturing unit erased earlier than being returned.

Challenges and workarounds

As in life, challenges arose that required fast pondering and adaptation:

• Software Listing Adjustments: A final-minute change to the applying record for session scanning gadgets was required. Though we initially deliberate to have all configurations prepared beforehand, this sudden change was effectively managed utilizing the Methods Supervisor with just some clicks.
• ThousandEyes Agent Limitations: Since ThousandEyes brokers have been beta SM shoppers, they couldn’t precisely collect connectivity information. This was an anticipated habits, but it surely posed a problem for efficient monitoring. To beat this, NOC members from Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco Meraki collaborated to hack collectively a proof of idea. By way of arduous work and a number of other iterations, we configured the ThousandEyes brokers to simulate system check-in visitors, mimicking legitimate SM shoppers.

Deploying Meraki Methods Supervisor at Black Hat was an intricate however rewarding endeavor. Regardless of dealing with challenges, our crew demonstrated agility and innovation, guaranteeing the occasion’s operations ran easily. The expertise underscored the significance of flexibility and fast downside fixing in managing large-scale occasions.

By leveraging superior MDM options like Meraki Methods Supervisor, we have been in a position to present a seamless expertise for attendees and exhibitors alike, showcasing the facility of know-how in occasion administration.

We’re happy with the collaboration of the Cisco crew and the NOC companions. Black Hat Europe will likely be December 9-12, 2024 on the London eXcel Centre.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Cisco NOC crew:

• Cisco Safe: Christian Clasen, Matt Vander Horst, Aditya Sankar, Ben Greenbaum, Ryan Maclennan, Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy, with distant help by Jessica (Bair) Oppenheimer
• Meraki Methods Supervisor: Dalton Ross, with distant help by Paul Fidler and Connor Laughlin. Search for their report on The Meraki Weblog.

Additionally, to our NOC companions:

• NetWitness (particularly Alessandro Zatti)
• Palo Alto Networks (particularly Jason Reverri and James Holland)
• Corelight (particularly Dustin Lee)
• Arista (particularly Jonathan Smith)
• Lumen and your entire Black Hat/Informa Tech employees (particularly Grifter ‘Neil Wyler,’ Bart Stump, Steve Fink, James Pope, Mike Spicer, Sandy Wenzel, Heather Williams, Jess Stafford and Steve Oldenbourg)

About Black Hat

Black Hat is the cybersecurity business’s most established and in-depth safety occasion sequence. Based in 1997, these annual, multi-day occasions present attendees with the newest in cybersecurity analysis, improvement, and tendencies. Pushed by the wants of the neighborhood, Black Hat occasions showcase content material straight from the neighborhood by way of Briefings displays, Trainings programs, Summits, and extra. Because the occasion sequence the place all profession ranges and educational disciplines convene to collaborate, community, and talk about the cybersecurity subjects that matter most to them, attendees can discover Black Hat occasions in america, Canada, Europe, Center East and Africa and Asia.

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