Adopting an Attacker Mindset to Defend Healthcare

This post started as a reply to a great topic on LinkedIn, but I hit the character limit so now it’s a blog post!

Years ago I simulated attacks (authorized obviously for the people that have wild imaginations) on a customer which included a physical attack where I walked into a healthcare organization, armed with a suit a smile (and a USB key) I needed to gain access and attempt to move laterally and escalate privileges.

Hacking

Active Directory Security Cheat Sheet

Ok you need to do some AD Security Auditing or Security Testing/Exploitation, great. Let’s look at some of the common misconfigurations and some tools to help you, a list of things will obviously not be the answer, you will need a method and process to go through from recon/enumeration through to exploitation and impact (effects), but that’s what google is for (and CTFs/Labs)! This post is just me jotting down some notes, hopefully they help defenders think about improving their posture.

Guides

Cyber Threat Intelligence Resources

There are so many lists of “tools” of “free resources” for “cyber” etc. Well I don’t want to make a list of stuff for social media, this isn’t the TOP x tools, this is simply some resources that I use on a regular basis that should give people a fairly good idea of where to start looking. Cyber sleuthing is a mixture of:

HUMINT
OSINT
CSINT
RUMINT
SIGINT
SOCMINT

Threat Intel

The RoyalMail Ransomware Saga

Last update we had was when LockBit released a transcript of a chat alleged to be between LockBit and the RoyalMail ransomware negotiator.

Thanks to Domonic far tagging me, we can see an update has occurred on the LB site:

Education

Am I a criminal or am I a cybersecurity…

Whilst the common person will largely link the words “hacker/hackers” to criminal the reality is hackers are scientists/artists/creators/ComputerOperators and the choice of being a criminal or not is down to actions and consequences. So the debate about if you identify as “hacker” does that make you a criminal, well it’s nonsense isn’t it. I could call myself a pony but it won’t make me one, much like I could call myself a criminal and I could be entirely law abiding.

Education

Is my house spying on me?

Do you ever get the feeing you are being watched? What about listening to it? Do you ever talk about a subject and then see it appear in adverts despite never using a computer to search for it?

Well don’t worry there’s lots of reasons as to why this can occur, and whilst you might want to think someone is spying on you, the truth is they probably aren’t looking for you, but they might be harvesting your data.

IOT

IoT Security

The digital explosion, the consumerization of technology and the world of internet connected fridges leads to a range of security and privacy risks.

There’s lots of work that’s occurred in this space, for example there is the : Code of Practice for Consumer IoT Security

Threat Intel

Active Cybercrime Groups

Ransomware this, ransomware that! The problem is, you can be tired of the subject but that doesn’t mean the threat has gone away! So what are the currently active ransomware groups posting victims?

Well here’s a list of currently active group (Both Ransomware and Marketplaces) names who have ONLINE “DARK WEB” (TOR) hidden services online and who are posting victims or are markets:

Education

How would I apply to the role of “Head…

I was pottering about (not like a wizard, more like a cold infected zombie!) and an email hit my mailbox with the “Head of Cyber Architecture” at BA. I have no intention of applying but I thought.. I wonder if this is a good exercise to show people how I would go about the exercise? Well to even begin this I need to write down some notes. So I guess here we go… how far I get into this “fantast football” style scenario who knows, but hopefully it will show some people how I might do things! First up let’s look at the raw requirement:

Threat Intel

ESXiargs Summary 09-02-2023 10:03

What do we know?

Adversary: Unknown, likely Criminal Actor/s

Initial Access Vector: Unknown/Unproven

Impact: ~3K+ Hosts have had Remote Code Execute and their ESXi logon pages changed (plus had encryption routines run to encrypt virtual machines, with varying success). A Second encryption routine has been deployed to some hosts; the threat actor is expanding/changing capabilities.

Risk: Further impact, Additional Threat Actors Exploit the vulnerability