Learning to Live with an Advanced Persistent Threat

1. Learning to Live with an Advanced Persistent Threat John Denune IT Security Director University of California, San Diego jdenune@ucsd.edu

2. ACT Infrastructure services Database Administration E-mail Active Directory Data Center Security Telecom Networking ID Management UNIX and Windows Support

3. ACT Security Policy and Compliance SSL Certs 9 Staff Firewall Anti-virus and FDE Forensics VPN Patch Management Incident Response Vulnerability Assessment Intrusion Detection

4. What is an APT? It’s not Opportunistic

5. Varied Attacks Espionage Technical Targeted APT Patient Corporate State-Sponsored Skilled Theft Hacktivism Physical threats Social Engineering

6. APT Lifecycle Complete Mission

7. Initial Detection June 2012

8. Lesson #1 Pay attention to anti-virus alerts

9. Lesson #2 Don’t (completely) rely on your anti-virus product

10. Lesson #3 Where possible, track IP’s instead of blocking them

11. Initial Recon February 2012 Initial Compromise April 2012

12. Gh0st RAT

13. Lesson #4 Make your local FBI agent your new best friend

14. Lesson #5 Have a secure communications plan in place

15. Lesson #6 Log everything, especially authentication, netflow and DNS

16. Attack timing All attacks took place Sunday – Thursday between the hours of 6pm and 3am Pacific

17. Attack Path

18. Malware Observations • You don’t need to crack passwords when you can just pass a hash You don’t need to rely on a lot of malware when you’ve already got a long list of credentials

19. Interactive Authentication Client computes LM and NTLM hash and stores them in memory. Plaintext password is reversibly encrypted and stored in memory. Password hash is salted with username and stored in registry.

20. Administrator Hash So, let’s say the domain administrator RDP’s to the client… Domain Admin NTLM hash now stored in client memory.

21. Pass the Hash Attacker compromises client… Steals hashes from memory… GAME OVER Accesses both server and domain controller

22. Mitigations Change passwords multiple times per day Fast track two factor authentication Compartmentalized passwords Separate user and admin credentials Minimize lateral trust Scan entire domain for scheduled tasks Rebuild Domain Controlers

23. Lesson #7 Reconsider traditional password best practices

24. Good passwords? *tecno9654postgres A Matt Hale Tribute CD would be cool.. Access-Control-Allow-Origin Abundance4me2day Bulletformyvalentine123 Elementarymydearwatson Putin is nothing but commie scum. Video killed the radio star? antcolonyoptimization

25. Emergency Action September 2012

26. Lesson #8 Effectively and securely communicating a password change is hard

27. We are not alone

28. Reengagement July 2013

29. ACT

30. Parting Thoughts Detection can be subtle and an art Have a good AD Team Logging visibility is essential Regular password changes are a MUST Be prepared to re-image any system Firewalls to prevent lateral movement Separation of user and admin credentials Require two-factor for OU Admins

31. A New Hope

32. A New Hope Strengthened LSASS to prevent credential dumps Many processes no longer store credentials in memory Better ways to restrict local account use over the network RDP use without putting the credentials on the remote computer Addition of a new Protected Users group, whose members' credentials cannot be used in remote PtH attacks

33. Further Reading Know Your Digital Enemy – Anatomy of a Gh0st RAT http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/white-papers/foundstone/wp-know-your-digital-enemy.pdf Mitigating Pass-the-Hash (PtH) Attacks and Other Credential Theft Techniques http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36036 APT1: Exposing One of China's Cyber Espionage Units http://intelreport.mandiant.com/Mandiant_APT1_Report.pdf

34. “If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain to be in peril.” ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War