During a DFIR (Digital Forensics and Incident Response) Case, we encountered an ESXi Hypervisor that was encrypted by the Ransomware LockBit 2.0. Suspicious SSH logons on the Hypervisor originated from an End-of-Life VPN Appliance (SonicWall SRA 4600). It turns out, this was the initial entry point for the Ransomware attack. Follow us into the forensics […]
Compass Security Blog
Offensive Defense
Sometimes one goes deep down the rabbit hole, only to notice later that what we were looking for is just under one’s nose.
This is the story of a digital forensic analysis on a Linux system running docker containers. Our customer was informed by a network provider that one of his system was actively attacking other systems on the Internet. The system responsible for the attacks was identified and shut down.
Our DFIR hotline responded to the call and we were provided with a disk image (VMDK) to perform a digital forensic analysis.
We put more and more sensitive data on mobile devices. For many private conversations we use mobile applications, such as WhatsApp. This smooth access to the data and the Internet provides multiple benefits in our lives. On the other side, new attack vectors are created. Phishing messages do not need to be delivered in an […]
Intro into a Compass Splunk App, which can be used to perform a first triage and high level analysis of Volatility results coming from multiple hosts.
In this blog post we will reverse engineer a sample which acts as downloader for malware (aka a “dropper”). It is not uncommon to find such a downloader during DFIR engagements so we decided to take a look at it. The sample that we are going to analyze has been obtained from abuse.ch and was […]
Sometimes, it doesn’t take much for a good scam: a good story, a little persuasion, then disappear again… and sometimes, the scammers come up with tactics that come straight out of the textbook.
Ransomware focuses on encrypting data on a filesystem-level, either locally on infected client systems or remotely on accessible file servers. However, what if ransomware would start encrypting data on an application-level too?
Contents Introduction Background Story External Device Access Auditing with Windows Security Event Logs Audit Plug and Play Activity Audit Removable Storage Activity External Device Access Auditing with Default Windows Artifacts Other Ways to Monitor External Device Usage Conclusion References Introduction Have you ever investigated a data leakage case involving a suspect potentially leaking data to […]
Present State of Affairs We have been teaching forensics and network incident analysis for quite a while. We have investigated into a reputable number of cases and we are not the only doing so. Hence, one would expect a certain degree of automation in analysis. However, the high frequency of software release cycles somehow leads […]
Contents Introduction Attack Overview Step-by-Step Detection Email Clients Administration Tools Exchange Compliance Features MAPI Editor Eradication Microsoft Security Response Center Swiss Cyber Storm 2018 Conclusion References Introduction In recent investigations, Compass recognized a raise in popularity for attackers to compromise Microsoft Exchange credentials. As one of the first steps after having obtained the credentials (most […]
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