Smarter Security Starts with Understanding How Cybercriminals Work

Today’s security teams are struggling to keep pace with the changes in their networks. Multi-cloud, virtualization, the explosion of IoT and BYOD devices, agile software development, and the crushing volume and speed of data—not to mention Shadow IT— have resources stretched thin. Meanwhile, cybercriminals have been undergoing their own digital transformation. Machine learning and agile development, new sophisticated attacks like ransomware and cryptomining, combined with Dark Web crime-as-a-service offerings mean that attacks are faster, harder to detect, and better at finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.

Understanding the Attack Chain

Effectively defending against cyberattacks in this new environment requires security teams to work smarter rather than harder. Today’s cybercriminal strategies target every link in an attack chain, from gathering information and gaining access, to moving laterally across the network to discover resources to target, to evading detection while exfiltrating data. Traditional security strategies, however, tend to only focus on a handful of attack components, which gives criminals a significant advantage.

Initial Access: Exploiting known vulnerabilities in servers, compromising websites or applications, or taking advantage of successful spearphishing attacks allow attackers to wedge a foothold into the edge of the network.

Execution: This is the point where an attacker executes a binary, command, or script to begin their network reconnaissance and exploitation process.

Persistence: Once an attacker has established a foothold, the next goal is to avoid detection. Creating or manipulating accounts, applying rootkits, using run keys or exploiting tools like application shimming enable attackers to persist in place while the explore the network for potential targets.

Privilege Escalation: Basic access does not allow an attacker much opportunity to explore the network. To move around the network and access resources worth stealing, an attacker needs higher network privileges.

Defense Evasion: To move through a network undetected, especially when exfiltrating data, attacks need to avoid detection by things like behavioral analytics and IPS tools. Techniques such as clearing files, learning and mimicking normal traffic behaviors, or disabling security tools are just a few of the full range of tools available to today's hackers.

Credential Access: In many organizations, critical data and other resources are protected behind a wall of security that require appropriate credentials for access. Unfortunately, gaining access to credentials isn't always that difficult. They are stored in files or in a registry that attackers can exploit, techniques like hooking allow cybercriminals to intercept traffic to uncover credentials, and account manipulation can involve things like adding or modifying the permissions to the account being used to access the network.

Discovery and Lateral Movement: Not all data exists in the segment of the network that was broken into. Many of the same techniques used to this point are used again to determine where valuable resources exist and to then allow an attacker to move laterally between network segments, whether they are local to the breach or at some remote physical or virtual data center.

Collection and Exfiltration: Once an attacker has identified a payload, they need to collect that data needs and extract it from the network without being detected. This is often the trickiest part of the process, as this may involve massive amounts of data. But if a cybercriminal has carefully crafted each attack element to this point, they are often able to remain inside a compromised network for months, slowly moving data to other resources that are under less scrutiny, and eventually out of the network.

Command and Control: The final step is for attackers to cover their tracks completely. Multi-hop proxies, data obfuscation, and multi-stage exfiltration are just a few of the techniques cybercriminals use to ensure that stolen data cannot be tracked and traced back to them.

Working Smarter

Addressing the entire attack chain needs to be combined with understanding how the network functions, including the impact that future business requirements will have on the network. Mapping those functions to the attack chain allows security teams to think comprehensively about security threats.

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