Understanding Cyber Attacks: Technical Aspects of Cyber Kill Chain Tarun Yadav & Rao Arvind Mallari DRDO, Ministry of Defense, INDIA Third International Symposium on Security in Computing and Communications (SSCC-2015), 11th August 2015, SCMS Kochi, India
Introduction Why Cyber Kill Chain? What is Cyber Kill Chain Model? Attacker’s View and Actions APTs, Cyber Espionage Attack Attacker Reconnaissance Weaponize Delivery Target System Exploitation Installation Command & Control Interaction Act on Objective
Reconnaissance Methodologies: Target Identification and Selection Target Profiling Target Validation Network & System Configuration Active Passive Types: Passive Reconnaissance Active Reconnaissance
Weponize Exploits for: PDF, DOC, PPT, MP3, Video Player Software Bugs Vulnerabilities Exploits Exploits for: PDF, DOC, PPT, MP3, Video Player Attack Attacker Reconnaissance Weaponize Delivery Exploit Payload (RAT) Target System Exploitation Installation Command & Control Interaction Server Client Act on Objective File Download/Upload Keystrokes Capture Screen/Webcam Capture Propagation in network Standalone or Modular
Delivery Information from Reconnaissance is used to increase affinity Delivery Methods Email Attachments Phishing Attacks Drive By Downloads USB/Removable Media DNS Cache Poisoning
Exploitation AV Run Time Detection Static Detection IDS,IPS, Firewall Attack Attacker Reconnaissance Weaponize Delivery Static Detection Target System Exploitation Precondition to Exploit: Must use Vulnerable Software Software should not be Updated Software should not be Not Upgraded Installation Command & Control Interaction Act on Objective AV Run Time Detection (Heuristic and Behavioral Detection)
Installation Dropper Downloader Persistent, Stealthy and Non Attributable Installation Anti-Debugger and Anti-Emulation Anti-AntiVirus Rootkit and Bootkits Targeted Delivery Host-Based Encrypted Data Exfiltration Dropper: The payload is already present at the system in some obfuscated form. Injector if the dropped binary is only done in memory. Downloader: 2 stage process with a stub that initially runs at the target. On successful execution of the stub, the stub contacts the server and downloads a piece of malware and runs it.
Command & Control Act on Objective Centralized, Decentralized and Social Network based architectures Unobservable Communication Channel IRC, TCP, HTTP, FTP, TOR etc. Avoiding C&C server Detection DNS Fast Flux, DNS as Medium, Domain Generation Algorithms(DGA) Targeted Attack - Ex-filtrating secret information, Disruption of critical Infrastructure, State sponsored espionage Mass Attack – User Credentials, Financial Frauds, DDoS Attacks, BOTNets Act on Objective
Conclusion Presented Attacker’s Perspective Trends of attackers in each level Seeing to the future, a defense in depth strategy based on cyber kill chain is to be envisioned. Reconnaissance Weaponize Delivery Target System Exploitation Installation Command & Control Interaction Act on Objective
Thank You Contact: arvindrao@hqr.drdo.in tarunyadav@hqr.drdo.in Doubts or Questions?? Contact: arvindrao@hqr.drdo.in tarunyadav@hqr.drdo.in