Sea Turtle

The attacker is actively scanning the internet for vulnerable hosts, and then compromising those hosts for future malicious activity.

Name:
Sea Turtle

TTP:
T1583.001 Acquire Infrastructure: Domains, T1595.001 Active Scanning: Scanning IP Blocks, T1595.002 Active Scanning: Vulnerability Scanning, T1595.003 Active Scanning: Wordlist Scanning, T1584.001 Compromise Infrastructure: Domains, T1589.002 Gather Victim Identity Information: Email Addresses

Hypothesis:

The attacker is actively scanning the internet for vulnerable hosts, and then compromising those hosts for future malicious activity.

Campaign Type:
TTP Driven

Data Sources:

  • Network Traffic
  • Process Monitoring
  • Process Command-Line Parameters
  • SSL/TLS Inspection
  • Web Proxy
  • Packet Capture

Tools:

  • Suricata
  • Zeek
  • Wireshark
  • tcpdump

Scenario:

  1. Initial Access: The attacker gains initial access to a host.
  2. Discovery: The attacker performs reconnaissance of the network to identify potential targets.
  3. Lateral Movement: The attacker moves laterally through the network to gain access to additional systems.
  4. Exfiltration: The attacker exfiltrates data from the network.
  5. Impact: The attacker causes an impact to the organization, such as data loss or disruption of operations.

Hunting Strategy:

  1. Analyze network traffic for signs of scanning activity.
  2. Correlate scanning activity with other events, such as process creation and network connections.
  3. Investigate outliers and suspicious events.
  4. Validate potential threats by analyzing the attacker’s tools and techniques.
  5. Remediate the threat by blocking the attacker’s access to the network and removing any malware that has been installed.
  6. Report the findings of the threat hunt to the organization’s security team.

False Positive Consideration:

  • Scanning activity may be conducted by security researchers or penetration testers.
  • Network traffic may be encrypted, making it difficult to detect scanning activity.

Recommendations:

  • Implement network security monitoring tools to detect scanning activity.
  • Block all unsolicited inbound traffic.
  • Keep systems up to date with the latest security patches.

D3 Diagram:

Leave a Reply