Risk – PwnDefend

Why a SOC Without Triage, Analysis, and Remediation Is…

In the world of cybersecurity, the term Security Operations Center (SOC) carries significant weight. It evokes images of highly skilled analysts working around the clock to detect, respond to, and mitigate cyber threats. However, not all SOCs live up to this expectation. If a SOC lacks core functions like triage, analysis, assessment, and remedial action, it’s not truly a SOC—it’s merely a contact center masquerading as one. Let’s explore why these functions are non-negotiable for a SOC and why their absence undermines the entire purpose of cybersecurity operations.

Leadership

Cybercrime and data theft

During an incident it’s one of the first questions people ask, what did the attacker do? Did they steal any data? How did they do it?

All of which are typically rather difficult to answer in the first, probably week of an incident (incidents vary, sometimes it’s very obvious, other times you can’t be 100% sure on some details!)

But recently I’ve been talking lots about the way organisations communicate during incidents to their customers and the public etc. I’ve been explaining that the day 0 comms of ‘no data was stolen’ followed by a ‘lots of data was stolen’ in say day zero plus five… well it doesn’t help with my my trust in the victim organisation. Which to me, seems like an odd strategy for organisations to take. They have options:

Threat Intel

The Com, 764, and Associated Groups

In evaluating capabilities for LLMs (AI) recently, I’m looking at the viability of creating more content with them. I’m explicitly calling out where I do, aside from my writing style, I’m also keen to show the pros and cons. Do LLMs replace humans? Not from my experience so far. I’ve been looking at combined physical + digital attacks recently and the associated threat classes… I’m trying to avoid the word group or gang, because collectives are slightly different and are dynamic, almost mission focused if you will.

Threat Intel

An evolution of threat actor

Motivation and a diverse network of people and capabilities can go a long way, then add in digital skills and winning steak… and you have: scattered spider!

There’s a big difference between zero day spraying the internet and planting webshells or copying someone’s open S3 bucket and say…. doxing staff, their families and attacking them and their assets in the real and digital worlds.

I think people won’t broadly grasp the effects that can be achieved (harm) when the adversary is motivated, dedicated, capable, resourced and has very little moral qualms.

There is no magic bullet to defend against an adversary like this, you need a whole of organisation defence (and to pursue even more than that!).

Threat Intel

Defending Against Scattered Spider

Defending against different skilled threat classes is an important thing to consider when you are planning, designing and operating a business. I’ve used GROK (AI) to create an html page which has both information on the kill chains, but also looks at countermeasures. I’m experimenting lots with VIBE coding and LLM assisted content generation so hopefully this proves useful. I do feel it needs a more human touch added as well… but let’s see! life without experimentation would be dull would it not!

Can AI replace intelligence analysts?

Ok, it’s late, and well I wanted to look into cyber attacks where social engineering is a key component combined with technical hacking skills.

There’s been a growing number of these style events, so I tasked GROK to create an assessment for me, let’s see how it did! Let’s both try and answer the questions:

Can GROK replace intelligence officers and can GROK help us defend better against social engineering + technical attacks? What do you think? (please take all of this with a pinch of salt… LLMs are known to make mistakes/hallucinate/lie in a very convincing manner)….

they look nice…. but looks can as we know, be deceiving! (is the entire blog just a social engineering experiment by me?)

Education

Unravel the Mystery of Cyber Noir Detective: A Thrilling…

[This is why we need humans and not AI to write things!]

This is what an LLM said about my Cyber Noir game…. I think this is going to need me to write something! But that will come another day, today you can enjoy how humans are, not entirely replaced yet!

Enjoy! (perhaps just play the game!)

https://mr-r3b00t.github.io/cyber-detective

In the neon-drenched streets of Neon City, where high-tech crime and shadowy conspiracies collide, a new kind of detective story awaits. Cyber Noir Detective, an innovative choose-your-own-adventure game, invites players to step into the shoes of Riley Voss, a seasoned investigator tasked with thwarting a catastrophic cyber breach at NexCorp. This browser-based experience, crafted by cybersecurity experts at PwnDefend, blends immersive storytelling with subtle educational insights, making it a must-play for fans of interactive fiction, cyberpunk aesthetics, and digital security.

Education

A Cyber Noir Detective Game

Recently vibe coding has been the name of the game! So whilst dealing with an incident I was thinking about some of the common challenges organisations face when it comes to incident response, which led onto the broader topics of why do so many orgs either have no policies or defined processes but even when they do, people don’t follow them.

So much focus is given to cyber awareness training for ‘end users’ but not so much about training IT and business teams in how to manage incidents.

Enter: Gamified training + comic books + detectives!

Defence

Disable and Remove Windows Quick Assist

Recently this subject has come up again, so thought I would create a post.

By default Windows comes with Quick assist, an RDP based service with is encapsulated in HTTPS, it allows users to both offer and request assistance between two Windows machines (remote control). You can read more here:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/client-tools/quick-assist

Leadership

OMG The Cyber SKY is falling down!

Ok a bit dramatic, but that’s often what you might feel if you spend lots of time in the vulnerability space (which if you work in cyber security.. you probably do!). We often hear about the NEXT: STUXNET, HEARTBLEED, WANNACRY/ETERNAL BLUE, LOG4J etc. but actually when it comes to it… the number of times we have word endangering unauthenticated remote code execution that is a danger to global society is far less than when we have other vulnerabilities. It’s the exception not the rule.