Compass Security Blog

Offensive Defense

Luring the Threat: Lessons from ICS Honeypots in Ukraine and Germany

In today’s interconnected world, it is a well-known fact that systems with Internet exposure are under continual threat of cyber-attacks. This risk extends from private websites to corporate infrastructure. With the increasing modernization of Industrial Control Systems (ICS), these vital components also become more exposed to such threats. But what is the extent and nature […]

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101 for lateral movement detection

The article discusses the very basics to keep systems ready for analysis of lateral movement. We present some guidelines in form of a cheat sheet and a tool (Readinizer) that you can run, to ensure that everything is set up as in the guidelines provided.

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Forensic Readiness

Introduction Every year Bitkom and others publish the statistics of detected attacks. These numbers are increasing (30% in 2014, 51% in 2015, 69% in 2016 each regarding the last two years). According to annual Mandiant reports, the duration until an attack is detected is 148 days in median. 148 days is a long time to gain […]

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APT Detection & Network Analysis

Until recently, the majority of organizations believed that they do not have to worry about targeted attacks, because they consider themselves to be “flying under the radar”. The common belief has been: “We are too small, only big organizations like financial service providers, military industry, energy suppliers and government institutions are affected”. However, this assumption […]

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Netzwerktraffic und APT Analyse

Compass Security wird vermehrt von Kunden bzgl. Verdacht auf Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) kontaktiert. Unter die Bezeichnung “APT” fallen komplexe, zielgerichtete und äusserst effektive Angriffe auf kritische und zuweilen gar unternehmenswichtige Computersysteme bzw. deren gespeicherte Informationen. Die Analyse von potentiell infiltrierten Netzen und Systemen gestaltet sich jedoch als enorm aufwändig, da Unmengen von Datensätzen und […]

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Challenges in Log Management

Recently, SANS Institute has published the 9th log management survey (2014). The paper identifies strengths and weaknesses in log management systems and practices. It further provides advice to improve visibility across systems with proper log collection, normalization and analysis. Log management is very important to Compass as it heavily influences forensic investigations. Evidently, accurate information […]

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APT Detection Engine based on Splunk

Compass Security is working on an APT Detection Engine based on Splunk within the Hacking-Lab environment. Hacking-Lab is a remote training lab for cyber specialists, used by more then 22’000 users world-wide, run by Security Competence GmbH. An advanced persistent threat (APT) is a network attack in which an unauthorized person gains access to a network […]

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