The Black Hat Community Operations Middle (NOC) offers a high-security, high-availability community in one of the vital demanding environments on the planet: the Black Hat occasion.
The NOC companions are chosen by Black Hat, with Arista, Cisco, Corelight, Lumen, NetWitness and Palo Alto Networks delivering from Las Vegas this yr. Cisco is the official Area Identify Service, Malware Evaluation and Cell System Administration supplier. The Meraki workforce is writing a weblog concerning the experiences in defending and managing the Black Hat cellular units.
The companions additionally present built-in safety, visibility and automation: a Safety Operations Middle (SOC) contained in the NOC, with Grifter ‘Niel Wyler’ and Bart Stump because the leaders.
Integration is vital to success within the SOC of the NOC. At every convention, we have now a hack-a-thon to create, show, take a look at, enhance and at last put into manufacturing new or improved integrations. To be a NOC associate, you should be prepared to collaborate, share Automated Programming Interface (API) keys and documentation, and are available collectively (whilst market rivals) to safe the convention for the great of the attendees.
XDR integrations
Cisco joined the Black Hat NOC in 2016, when requested to supply automated malware evaluation with Risk Grid. The Cisco contributions to the community and safety operations advanced, with the wants of the client, to incorporate extra elements of the Cisco Safety Cloud:
The NOC leaders allowed Cisco (and the opposite NOC companions) to herald extra software program to make our inside work extra environment friendly and have higher visibility. Nevertheless, Cisco isn’t the official supplier for Prolonged Detection & Response (XDR), Community Detection & Response or Collaboration.
- Cisco XDR: Community Visitors Visibility and Risk Detection/Risk Searching/Risk Intelligence Enrichment/Govt Dashboards/Automation
- Cisco Webex: Incident notification and workforce collaboration
The Cisco XDR command middle dashboard tiles made it simple to see the standing of every of the related Cisco Safety applied sciences, the general risk panorama and the standing of community availability as monitored by ThousandEyes brokers.
Under are the Cisco XDR integrations for Black Hat USA, empowering analysts to research Indicators of Compromise (IOC) in a short time, with one search. We respect alphaMountain.ai, Pulsedive and Recorded Future donating full licenses to the Black Hat USA 2024 NOC. Additionally, try the weblog on XDR turning one yr previous and the affect of Black Hat occasions.
One of many new integrations this yr was with a utility written by one among our SOC workforce members. Each safety skilled — particularly SOC analysts and responders — have a collection of “quick lookup” type instruments that they use to reply varied questions on artifacts in an investigation. Shodan is a superb instance; “given an IP address, what services is that IP providing, and what software are they using to provide it?”. Paste the IP into Shodan, and you’ll seemingly get your reply. With the Shodan integration in XDR, you don’t even have to repeat and paste — simply click on the IP after which within the drop down menu, click on the Shodan hyperlink. However there are a whole lot of such instruments…
Ben took one of many integration server templates that Cisco Safety printed on Github and modified it to our wants. He then hosted it on his cloud supplier of alternative, added it to our XDR configuration and will add these easy pivots to XDR on the fly. A easy edit of a textual content file on the server and we might leap from any observable to any new related reference web site that anybody had instructed.
Cisco XDR is constructed on the beliefs of an open integration framework, with printed knowledge fashions, API specs and pattern code obtainable to be modified or used as examples/tutorials (together with precise tutorials at DevNet). This dedication to extensibility permits for modifications such because the above with out requiring any motion from the XDR improvement or product groups, permitting clients to tailor XDR to their distinctive wants.
For instance, an IP tried
Investigation of the IP confirmed: It was identified malicious.
Additionally, the geo location is in RU and identified affiliated domains. With this data, the NOC management authorised the shunning of the IP.
XDR: Asset visibility
By: Ben Greenbaum
Because the Black Hat community evolves, completely different distributors are given alternatives to deliver their merchandise into the toolbox. On account of this ongoing biking, we didn’t have entry to the depth of intelligence beforehand offered by deployment of a Meraki wi-fi infrastructure. Nevertheless, because of the functionality constructed into XDR Asset Insights to add a customized CSV file of belongings, we had been in a position to simply operationalize identified community topography into investigative and response operations.
One of many distinctive challenges of the Black Hat atmosphere is how completely different it’s from a “normal” buyer’s manufacturing community. We have now a number of hundred units whose safety is our major purpose, however tens of hundreds of unmanaged (and sometimes hostile) units within the native community which we need to defend from one another and defend the skin world from. This distinctive association very a lot drives residence the worth that an EDR brings to an XDR resolution. With out good endpoint visibility, the problem is way higher. The good thing about an open XDR strategy that isn’t an evolution of an current EDR providing is that it may be one among a number of EDRs, however “one” is preferable to none.
Malware Analytics
By: Ben Greenbaum
Cisco Malware Analytics (previously Risk Grid) was once more used because the backend file evaluation and malware detection engine. We supported our companions from CoreLight and Netwitness, with evaluation of recordsdata pulled from clear textual content (convention attendee) and choose encrypted classes (essential infrastructure).
As ordinary, the recordsdata present in clear textual content communications had been a great indicator of what sorts of data will be anticipated to be leaked by a crowd of safety professionals, and this yr the result rated a strong “less awful.” Doubtlessly spicy content material included varied PII (names, employers, positions, e mail addresses, and so forth.) from Black Hat receipts and some company e mail attachments.
And whereas Umbrella did alert us to some wandering infections phoning residence, we are able to say that a minimum of no malware was transferred…within the clear.
By: Aditya Sankar
Cisco XDR features a built-in automation functionality known as XDR automation. If in case you have heard of Safety Orchestration Automation Response (SOAR), Cisco XDR has the complete suite of SOAR options. That features the power to drag-and-drop prebuilt code blocks in a selected sequence to create a customized workflow, executing arbitrary API calls to function one-click response actions and creating guidelines to set off workflows primarily based off a schedule or another standards.
We have now been utilizing XDR Automate at Black Hat for 3 years to enhance the Cisco providers to our joint buyer, Black Hat, and have carried out quite a lot of use circumstances. Nevertheless, this has sometimes required fairly a little bit of time to be taught APIs and create a very customized workflow. With the most recent XDR Automation Change, the Change web page is used to search out, view, set up and uninstall pre-written workflows which were launched or authorised by Cisco engineers and content material suppliers. Workflows authored by the group have handed a primary high quality verify and are supported by the Cisco DevNet Group on a best-effort foundation. The Exchanges helps allow collaboration between workflow creators and moreover reduces the time it takes for a consumer to expertise worth from XDR automation.
Shout out to Ivan Berlinson, who wrote a workflow to tug risk logs from the Palo Alto Networks API and create Incidents in Cisco XDR. Since Ivan was sort sufficient to publish the workflow to the Change, it was extraordinarily simple to import the workflow and get it operational. Putting in a workflow from the change is basically like strolling by way of a configuration wizard. It features a description of what the workflow does, the required targets and variables, in addition to a contact particular person for help. Here’s what the workflow seems like within the Change simply earlier than set up.
This workflow requires Automation distant, on-premises digital machine deployed over ESXi to make sure correct connectivity to the Palo Alto Panorama equipment. Shoutout to Matt Vander Horst who helped with the vCenter required to deploy the Automation distant equipment. The Change prompts the consumer to supply values for the required variables and choose the suitable on-premises goal.
Then the workflow is put in and scheduled to run each quarter-hour through an automation rule.
This workflow makes use of the PAN-OS XML API to question for risk logs at this path . This kicks off a search job. As soon as the search job is completed, the workflow retrieves the outcomes and begins parsing the risk logs. A Cisco Risk Intelligence Mannequin (CTIM) sighting is created for every particular person risk log and grouped collectively by inside host IP. Subsequent, a CTIM indicator with the outline of the risk log and a relationship to the corresponding sighting are each created. Lastly, an incident bundle is created with the sighting, relationship and indicator entities and posted to the XDR API. The workflow has logic in-built to verify for duplicate incidents and current indicators.
Here’s what one of many incidents that was created from this automation workflow seems like in Cisco XDR. This gave us as analysts within the SOC an excellent start line for an investigation.
These Palo Alto Community risk logs point out a listing traversal assault that goals to entry recordsdata and directories which might be saved outdoors the online root folder. PAN Firewall alerts on listing traversal and accessing /passwd> from supply IP 192.168.130.86 on basic attendee Wi-Fi to vacation spot IP , which resolves to . This area is marked as suspicious by a number of risk intelligence sources and has a medium threat rating of 72 in Cisco Umbrella. The host then proceeded to obtain recordsdata from
The vacation spot IP reveals unknown with XDR risk intelligence, however the area it resolves to appears to be suspicious and it’s hosted within the Russian Federation, as seen within the Umbrella console. Listed below are extra particulars offered by the Corelight workforce in our lively Risk Searching Slack chanel: HTTP POST exercise to the vacation spot in query reveals a primary authentication token that decodes to
We did discover the host making comparable queries like
Ivan Berlison additionally offered one other workflow to supply an XDR Incident when a file is convicted in Cisco Safe Malware analytics. Corelight, in addition to NetWitness, carve recordsdata off the community and submit them to be detonated in Safe Malware Analytics. Here’s what the XDR incident seems like when a file with a risk rating above 90 is seen:
We had an exquisite time innovating and investigating at Black Hat USA 2024! The XDR automation change was an enormous support in including extra automation capabilities with very minimal customized work. Try AJ Shipley’s weblog on how utilizing Cisco XDR at Black Hat has accelerated our open ecosystem. We’ll be again once more subsequent yr, so lengthy Black Hat!
Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA)
By: Ryan MacLennan
Splunk Assault Analyzer (SAA) is a brand new addition to our deployment. As you might know, Cisco acquired Splunk this yr. Due to this new acquisition we labored with our counterparts in Splunk to get their SAA product provisioned for our use at Black Hat. SAA is a file and URL evaluation platform much like Safe Malware Analytics. SAA makes use of a complicated set of standards to find out which engine can be finest fitted to evaluation — like net analyzer, static file evaluation, e mail analyzer, signature engines and/or the sandbox. Whereas the product is able to dynamic and static evaluation, we selected to do solely static evaluation for our use at Black Hat.
What is really highly effective concerning the evaluation of SAA is its assault chain following functionality: The power to intelligently decide how a human would click on on gadgets in a webpage. It is going to observe hyperlinks, obtain recordsdata and analyze extra indicators from community connections, identified malicious recordsdata, an unknown malicious file that’s analyzed on the fly, phishing domains and extra. It is going to observe a logical move like a human to find out the trail to compromise. This was fascinating to see in our surroundings because it confirmed the trail from a file, the hyperlinks present in it, to completely different web sites, and every step of the trail had a screenshot for us to observe alongside.
For instance, we have now a PDF that was submitted to SAA. It discovered hyperlinks within the file and adopted them to see if they might result in one thing malicious. I’ve blocked out many of the URLs, however we are able to see the way it went by way of the PDF knowledge and clicked on the hyperlinks to search out out the place it will go.
After SAA did its factor, we might have a look at the file in query and the screenshots that it took. We discovered that this file was the information utilized in a coaching room and every hyperlink was a reference to an article, a coaching useful resource (self-hosted and official), or different informational assets a pupil might have.
We had been in a position so as to add this integration with the assistance of our associate Corelight. We talked to them on day one they usually had been excited to get a brand new integration developed with SAA. A number of hours later, we had an integration with them. This was a tremendous instance of how all of us come collectively to make the NOC higher at Black Hat yearly.
Umbrella DNS
By: Christian Clasen and Justin Murphy
If in case you have learn the earlier Black Hat NOC/SOC stories, you already know that in 2023, we made a change to the DNS design. In prior conferences, we assigned inside forwarders to purchasers through DHCP, however didn’t pressure their use. Primarily, attendees might use any DNS resolvers they selected, and we didn’t intrude. The change we carried out was to start forcibly redirecting DNS site visitors to the on-premises DNS forwarders. You possibly can see within the statistics above that this modification triggered a major leap in queries processed by Cisco Umbrella — from 54.4 million to 79.3 million.
The steep enhance in question rely was not sudden. What was sudden, nevertheless, was a lower in question rely between 2023 and 2024. Whereas we don’t know the exact explanation for this drop, we do have some theories and methods we are able to take a look at them going ahead.
One doable clarification is the prevalence of encrypted DNS protocols. Lately, the trade has turned its consideration to the privateness, integrity and authenticity issues inherent within the plain-text DNS protocol. To unravel a few of these points, “last-mile” encryption has change into a favourite of OS and browser distributors. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) and DNS-over-TLS (DoT) are solely a few the preferred methods to encrypt DNS between the shopper and the recursive resolver.
Detecting all encrypted DNS will be troublesome and counting the queries unattainable. It is because TCP is the chosen transport for DoH and DoT, and this permits the shopper to pipeline a number of queries over one long-lived TCP and TLS session. However what we are able to usually discover are the “bootstrap” plain-text DNS queries that allow to shopper to search out the encrypted DNS server. By working a report in Umbrella for the class “DoH and DoT”, we are able to get a deal with on the preferred of those providers:
The entry for
On this report, we additionally see “canary” domains corresponding to
Going ahead, we’ll monitor the statistics of those protocols on the convention networks and see what different data we are able to collect utilizing the complete packet seize capabilities of our companions and the risk searching capabilities of Cisco XDR. You possibly can anticipate this subject to be expanded on within the subsequent convention report.
One of many major causes to a minimum of monitor DNS is to know traits and the way the community at Black Hat is getting used from a excessive degree. There are various insights that may be gained from forcing DNS by way of a centralized service with intelligence. DNS queries exist for locations that host every little thing from Malware, Crypto Mining and Phishing to content material classes like Social Media, Finance and Unlawful Actions. Moreover, these domains will be categorized into particular purposes as properly. With the App Discovery report in Umbrella, these domains are grouped by software, figuring out the potential use of hundreds of purposes. This might be net apps or different desktop/cellular apps.
As all the time, we proceed to see an increase in app utilization at Black Hat:
- BHUSA 2019: ~3,600
- BHUSA 2021: ~2,600
- BHUSA 2022: ~6,300
- BHUSA 2023: ~7,500
- BHUSA 2024: ~9,300
This yr there was one stand out Utility Class that has been rising in reputation: Generative AI. It is going to seemingly be no shock that there are extra attendees and their instruments utilizing Generative AI. We have now gone from seeing it as a footnote in logs to reporting it at RSAC 2024, as we noticed 80 completely different Generative AI instruments getting used.
Evaluate this to Black Hat 2024, only a few months later, the place the full quantity has jumped to 194.
This doesn’t look like only a distinction in conferences, however reasonably a rising pattern and acceptance of those instruments.
Community Assurance
By: Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy
The ThousandEyes deployment launched at Black Hat USA 2023 one yr in the past. At that convention, we spent many lengthy shifts creating the configurations, design, and procedures that shaped the premise for our convention protection. The deployment was additional improved and streamlined at Black Hat London and Black Hat Asia. At this yr’s Black Hat USA 2024, we had been able to increase our protection considerably whereas persevering with to refine our procedures.
New {hardware}
We added 20 Orange Pi units at Black Hat 2024, along with the 8 Raspberry Pi units we deployed in 2023. We’re nonetheless properly wanting the proverbial thousand eyes, however 28 is much more than 8. We deployed our new fleet of Orange Pi units to watch the wi-fi community, whereas the previous Raspberry Pi units had been used for wired monitoring of Registration, the NOC and core community units.
Orange Pi configuration
Mike Spicer put in quite a lot of time to develop new configuration and deployment procedures for the Orange Pi units earlier than the convention. We had been in a position to make use of a script and a small native community to configure every Orange Pi with a selected SSID and PSK. As soon as the Pi units had been configured and the goal entry factors had been deployed, every Pi was walked to its goal coaching room the place it will robotically hook up with the entry level (AP) on bootup and start working its scheduled monitoring checks.
Even with the scripting and automation, the configuration stage nonetheless resulted in a mass of wires (pictured above). Deploying the Pi units resulted in additional strolling than the typical attendee would expertise in a convention (not pictured).
Expanded wi-fi protection
With the extra brokers, we had been in a position to deploy to extra Black Hat coaching rooms. The expanded visibility allowed us to catch extra issues earlier than the coaching rooms went stay, together with a misconfigured PSK, an SSID that wasn’t broadcasting and an SSID that broadcast however didn’t have web connectivity. We’d like to have an agent for every coaching room for full visibility and validation heading into the convention, however we’re proud of what we caught and the extra confidence the brokers offered heading into the coaching days.
Because the convention shifted from trainings to the briefing days, we shifted our protection from the biggest coaching classes to giant briefing rooms and heavy-traffic areas like the doorway and Enterprise Corridor. Whereas we nonetheless needed to make robust strategic choices about what to cowl and what to not cowl, we had been nonetheless in a position to unfold brokers throughout every ground for basic visibility.
Troubleshooting
Our experiences over the previous three conferences had produced well-established troubleshooting procedures and paperwork for the Raspberry Pi units, however the Orange Pi devicess offered contemporary challenges. We had round 25% of our deployed Orange Pi units require troubleshooting throughout the first 24 hours after deployment, a regarding charge. Log evaluation revealed the wi-fi NIC turning into disconnected and the USB getting into a disconnect loop (the wi-fi NIC is related through USB on the Orange Pi units). The issues with the wi-fi NIC and USB result in a recurring ThousandEyes agent core recordsdata — a troublesome set of issues.
Nevertheless, these points turned out to be remoted reasonably than widespread, and by the top of the convention we had a full wi-fi deployment that was staying up all day and in a single day as properly. For what turned out to be remoted wi-fi issues, we developed troubleshooting procedures and documentation.
Automated ticketing
A brand new ticketing system was rolled out at this convention that might create tickets in Slack primarily based on ThousandEyes knowledge or reported points. Under is a ticket created primarily based on TE alerts for a selected convention room throughout the first morning of briefings.
The dashboards in ThousandEyes allowed us to supply fast visible data that confirmed which convention rooms had been experiencing the worst latency, alongside a comparability of latency throughout reporting rooms.
The automated stories behind every dashboard entry offered extra granular data, together with site visitors path and the latency alongside every leg within the site visitors path.
The brand new ticketing system allowed screenshots like those above to be aggregated within the ticket for workforce communication and report holding.
Troubleshooting WorkflowOn 08/06/2024 at 15:00, we noticed excessive latency to our Inner Umbrella DNS take a look at from the South Seas D Hallway and Enterprise Corridor Brokers. Be aware that the hyperlinks to the investigation views are offered as hyperlinks.
To slender down the view, we used a dashboard filter to concentrate on the 2 Brokers.
This confirmed the excessive latency noticed by the 2 Brokers prolonged throughout a number of checks.
From right here, we drilled down on every take a look at to verify the person take a look at outcomes.
Inside this view, we chosen a number of checks working on each Brokers and in contrast the outcomes.
We noticed that there was a latency spike reported by each Brokers.
To grasp the reason for the excessive latency, we drilled all the way down to Path Visualization.
We observed the excessive hyperlink delay between the Agent to its gateway. This means a difficulty both between the shopper and AP or between the AP and the server room with the router.
To verify the reason for the latency, we visited South Seas D. We ran extra checks to verify that the connection expertise match with the outcomes reported by the Agent. Reviewing the room and topology diagrams additional, we discovered that the AP overlaying South Seas D was positioned in an adjoining room, and was broadcasting two SSIDs — one for the room it was positioned in, and the opposite for South Seas D. The mixture of the AP placement, the AP servicing two rooms, and the attendee quantity in South Seas D mixed to supply the latency noticed by the Agent. These findings had been shared with the wi-fi workforce.
Cell machine administration at Black Hat: The position of Meraki Methods Supervisor
By: Dalton Ross
The Black Hat cybersecurity occasion in Las Vegas is famend for its cutting-edge expertise and seamless attendee expertise. A essential element of this success lies in efficient cellular machine administration (MDM). Since Black Hat USA 2021, we leveraged Cisco Meraki Methods Supervisor (SM) to deal with quite a lot of duties essential to the occasion’s operations. Under is an in depth have a look at how the Meraki SM was deployed and the challenges confronted alongside the way in which.
Important roles of cellular units at Black Hat
Cell units had been pivotal in a number of key areas:
- Registration Kiosk iPad Gadgets (~50 Gadgets): Used at registration kiosks to streamline the attendee check-in course of, the place attendees scan a QR code for fast badge printing
- Session Scanning iPad Gadgets (~75 Gadgets): Deployed throughout Black Hat classes to scan registered attendees into every session
- Lead Retrieval Gadgets (~800 Gadgets): A considerable variety of units had been utilized on the present ground cubicles to swiftly gather sales space customer contact knowledge
Deliberate deployment for Meraki Methods Supervisor
To make sure a easy deployment, our technique included a number of key steps:
- Pre-State with Apple Automated System Enrollment (ADE): Earlier than cargo to the occasion location, all units had been pre-staged utilizing ADE. This allowed units to be configured with a identified SSID for sooner deployment on web site.
- Segregated Transport: Gadgets had been to be shipped in three distinct groupings, every akin to one of many roles. This aimed to facilitate swift deployment upon arrival.
- Dashboard Script for Function Affiliation: A customized dashboard script was ready to leverage the Meraki Dashboard API and simply affiliate enrolled units with their respective roles.
- Automated Configuration Obtain: As soon as powered up, units had been anticipated to robotically obtain any mandatory configurations or apps associated to their position, making them prepared for instant deployment.
- Well being Monitoring with Cisco ThousandEyes: ThousandEyes brokers had been to be deployed all through the venue to log SM well being at completely different occasion areas.
- Submit-Occasion Manufacturing facility Reset: After the occasion, all units had been to be manufacturing facility erased earlier than being returned.
Challenges and workarounds
As in life, challenges arose that required fast pondering and adaptation:
- Utility Checklist Modifications: A final-minute change to the applying record for session scanning units was required. Though we initially deliberate to have all configurations prepared beforehand, this sudden change was effectively managed utilizing the Methods Supervisor with only a few clicks.
- ThousandEyes Agent Limitations: Since ThousandEyes brokers had been beta SM purchasers, they couldn’t precisely collect connectivity knowledge. This was an anticipated conduct, nevertheless it posed a problem for efficient monitoring. To beat this, NOC members from Cisco ThousandEyes and Cisco Meraki collaborated to hack collectively a proof of idea. Via exhausting work and a number of other iterations, we configured the ThousandEyes brokers to simulate machine check-in site visitors, mimicking legitimate SM purchasers.
Deploying Meraki Methods Supervisor at Black Hat was an intricate however rewarding endeavor. Regardless of dealing with challenges, our workforce demonstrated agility and innovation, guaranteeing the occasion’s operations ran easily. The expertise underscored the significance of flexibility and fast drawback fixing in managing large-scale occasions.
By leveraging superior MDM options like Meraki Methods Supervisor, we had been in a position to present a seamless expertise for attendees and exhibitors alike, showcasing the ability of expertise in occasion administration.
We’re pleased with the collaboration of the Cisco workforce and the NOC companions. Black Hat Europe shall be December 9-12, 2024 on the London eXcel Centre.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the Cisco NOC workforce:
- Cisco Safe: Christian Clasen, Matt Vander Horst, Aditya Sankar, Ben Greenbaum, Ryan Maclennan, Adam Kilgore, Shimei Cridlig, Shannon Wellington and Justin Murphy, with distant help by Jessica (Bair) Oppenheimer
- Meraki Methods Supervisor: Dalton Ross, with distant help by Paul Fidler and Connor Laughlin. Search for their report on The Meraki Weblog.
Additionally, to our NOC companions:
- NetWitness (particularly Alessandro Zatti)
- Palo Alto Networks (particularly Jason Reverri and James Holland)
- Corelight (particularly Dustin Lee)
- Arista (particularly Jonathan Smith)
- Lumen and your complete Black Hat/Informa Tech employees (particularly Grifter ‘Neil Wyler,’ Bart Stump, Steve Fink, James Pope, Mike Spicer, Sandy Wenzel, Heather Williams, Jess Stafford and Steve Oldenbourg)
About Black Hat
Black Hat is the cybersecurity trade’s most established and in-depth safety occasion collection. Based in 1997, these annual, multi-day occasions present attendees with the most recent in cybersecurity analysis, improvement, and traits. Pushed by the wants of the group, Black Hat occasions showcase content material immediately from the group by way of Briefings displays, Trainings programs, Summits, and extra. Because the occasion collection the place all profession ranges and educational disciplines convene to collaborate, community, and focus on the cybersecurity matters that matter most to them, attendees can discover Black Hat occasions in the USA, Canada, Europe, Center East and Africa and Asia.
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