Deception and Denial for Detecting Adversaries
Detect threats early in the attack cycle by attracting the attacker away from production assets with decoys, lures, and other deception bait. Comprehensive network and endpoint deceptions work hand in hand to derail attacks and catch reconnaissance, lateral movement, and credential theft activities.
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Overview
The ThreatDefend platform provides immediate value with precise detection and prevention functions based on its unique capability to simultaneously deceive attacks and deny access to sensitive objects while providing early and accurate detection.
The ThreatDefend platform’s two-pronged approach to security provides greater coverage against discovery, lateral movement, and privilege escalation activities. Deception technology misdirects attackers away from production assets to attack decoys that record their activities while gathering forensics and adversary intelligence. Denial technology goes one step further by preventing attackers from seeing or accessing valuable data and objects such as local administrator accounts, files, folders, network or cloud mapped shares, open ports and services, or Active Directory objects. Any interaction that touches the deception or the attempts to discover the hidden objects generates an alert that notifies security teams to the attacker’s presence. Denial technology is especially effective against modern-day human-driven ransomware attacks that use APT-style tactics to discover critical data for encryption and exfiltration. Deceiving and denying access provides both detection and prevention functions without affecting regular operations.
THE EVOLUTION
OF DECEPTION
Deception is not just a fancy honeypot. Honeypots first appeared in the 80’s and served as a useful function for understanding who was attacking an organization from outside the network. Commercial deception technology has come a very long way in evolving the technology to now serve as a high-fidelity in-network detection control. Honeypot limitations associated with scale and operations are now removed by using virtualization and machine-learning automation to manage creating, deploying, and operating the deception environment. The Attivo Networks ThreatDefend platform takes deception even further and into the area of active defense, which incorporates automated attack analysis, forensics, and native integrations for accelerated incident response.
THE ROLE OF DECEPTION & DENIAL IN THE ATTACK LIFECYCLE
Security investments are typically made in preventing an attack and exfiltration, This leaves a giant blind spot for
organizations as attackers that bypass the perimeter can then move laterally and steal credentials as they quietly
establish a foothold, gain privileges, and recon the network in search of their targets. Deception closes the in-network
detection gap by placing attractive endpoint lures, data deceptions, and traps throughout the network. Organizations
will immediately gain the visibility needed to derail these attacks and remediate compromised devices.
HOW DENIAL WORKS
Denial technology prevents attackers from seeing or gaining access to information, files, and storage they could use to progress their attack with discovery, lateral movement, and privilege escalation activities. As attackers attempt to discover or access these objects, the platform raises an alert containing the details of their activities down to the process and command line level.
HOW CONCEALMENT WORKS
Attackers can’t access, alter, or destroy objects they can’t see. Attivo Networks protects critical data and storage by hiding:
HOW DECEPTION WORKS
Deception works by using deceive traps and lures designed to attract an attacker into engaging and away from
production assets. Decoys are projected throughout the network along with endpoint credentials, mapped shares,
deception data or applications that will breadcrumb the attacker back to an engagement server that will alert on the
presence of an attacker.
DECEPTION ARCHITECTURE
Believability is critical to enticing the attacker, and as such Attivo Networks uses real operating systems, services,
and applications that mirror match the production environment. Golden image software can also be used for 100%
matching. Integration with Active Directory will also validate deception credentials for authenticity.
DECEPTION WITHIN THE SECURITY CONTROL STACK
Deception technology provides the “eyes within the network” visibility to threats that have bypassed perimeter
defenses. By laying a maze of decoys, lures, and mis-directions security teams can accurately and efficiently detect
early reconnaissance, lateral movement, and credential theft, improving detection time and reducing attacker
dwell time.
Cyber Deception For All Attack Surfaces
Attivo Networks cyber deception provides early and accurate threat detection with centralized management for an evolving attack surface.
Cloud
AWS, Azure, OpenStack, Google
Data Center Network
Distributed, microsegmented, private, public, hybrid
Corporate LAN
User, guest, wireless, wired
Endpoint
Mac, Windows, Linux, credentials, mapped shares, profile data
SPECIALIZED
ICS/SCADA, POS, telecom, IoT medical devices, infrastructure
APPLICATION
SWIFT, data, database, document
DISTRIBUTED
Remote office, branch office
ACTIVE DIRECTORY
Trusted domains, deceptive systems and user accounts
SPECIALIZED DECOY CAPABILITIES
DEVICE
Decoys that Mirror-Match Production Assets
Cisco Switches
Cisco Routers
Cisco Telephony
ICS/SCADA
loT
Medical loT
Point of Sale
SERVICES
Deceptive Decoy Services to Misdirect Attacks
Camera Streaming
File Transfer
Print Server
Remote Access
Web Server
APPLICATION
Deceptive Applications to Entice Attackers
Big Data
Database
Dock Apps
Retail Web Portal
Swift
Closing The Detection Gaps For All Threat Vectors
Perimeter & endpoint security solutions cannot reliably stop attacks from all vectors and methods. This has resulted in
attacker dwell times averaging 101+ days (M-Trends 2018 Report). Deception technology plays a critical role in
changing this paradigm by detecting attacks that have bypassed other security controls, early and accurately,
regardless of the methods used to compromise the network. Since deception uses traps and lures to detect an
adversary, the solution is not reliant on signatures or database look up. This makes deception scalable and capable of
reliably detecting attackers using ever-changing attack methods and targeting rapidly evolving attack surfaces.
Zero-day Exploitation
Credential Theft/reuse
Network Reconnaissance
Active Directory Reconnaissance
Communication Over Https
Man-in-the-middle Attack
DETECTING THE ADVERSARY
Threats arise from in a variety of factors and can come in the form of external threat actors. External adversaries,
insiders, contractors, and suppliers are all capable of creating risk and potentially breaching an organization. Since they
all are within the perimeter, many traditional security controls are in effective or unreliable as they try to learn
behaviors and alert on suspicious behavior. A different approach to in-network detection must be applied. These
security controls must be capable and accurate in detecting nefarious, policy violation, and risks from human error.
Deception plays a critical role in detecting adverse behavior and in alerting on employee conduct outside of authorized
practices. This could relate to unauthorized access, BYOD devices, undesirable activities, and insight into M&A
integrations. One simple touch of the deception environment provides a substantiated alert with details of attempted
actions. This provides the proof often required to take corrective and even legal action to protect an organization’s
data, IP, patents, and other operating controls.
EXTERNAL
Employees
Suppliers
Contractors
Mergers & Aquisitions
Pen Testers
Use Cases
— Decoy engagement-based detection
— Not reliant on signatures to detect attacks
— No pattern matching or database lookup
— In-network threat detection
— Detect early reconnaissance
— Detect lateral movement
— Detect activities used to maintain presence
— Decoys to address all attack surfaces
— User Network
— Data Center
— Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google, OpenStack)
— Specialized: IOT, ICS, POS, SWIFT, Router
— Early detection of MitM attacks
— Attack replay to better understand movement
— Data deceptions to misdirect attack
— DecoyDocs for counterintelligence on attacker intent
— Geolocation tracking of opened documents
— Demonstrate in-network detection
— Forensics to demonstrate resolution
— Trust but verify M&A visibility
— Blue Team’s choice control during Pen Testing
— High-fidelity alerts are actionable
— Basic and advanced user interface
— Easy to deploy and operate
— Automations for attack analysis and incident response
— Hide and Deny Ransomware Access to local, network, and cloud files and shares
— Delay encryption with high-interaction engagement technology to stall the attack
Deception For Ongoing Assessment And Compliance
Deception plays an important role in proving network resiliency. Blue teams can go into Pen Tests with confidence that they will be able to detect and record the actions of their Red team adversary. One of the benefits of the ThreatDefend platform is its ability to not only detect early reconnaissance and credential theft, but also in its ability to record and report on every move for the proof that they are well equipped to detect and quickly respond to threats. These reports can also be crucial for proving company and supplier compliance.
Think that deception wont be effective if the Red team knows its installed. You will be pleasantly surprised that Attivo Networks detection passes with flying colors, even when the attacker anticipates it is installed. Want to see what an attacker would see or how it will hold up against the adversary? Check out the BOTsink vulnerability emulator or ThreatInject tools to see what an attacker will see when looking for deception.
SPEAK TO A DECEPTION SPECIALIST
Ready to find out what the Attivo Networks solution can do for your organization? Our security experts are standing by, ready to answer your questions.
TOP TECHNOLOGY
DECEPTION TECHNOLOGY RECOMMENDED AS TOP 10
STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TREND FOR 2018
— GARTNER, INC.
Perspectives
Spotlight
Attivo Networks® ThreatDefend™ Deception and Response Platform Overview