Incident Containment

  • There are several ways to contain incidents
  • Strategy to contain incidents
  • Determines what tools and techniques can be used to contain the incident
  • Short term containment is a quick fix, used to prevent further damage.
  • Long term containment is an enterprise wide fix.
  • Perimeter containment - block inbound/outbound traffic, ids/ips filter, web application firewall policy and Null route DNS.
  • Network Containment - vlan isolation, router based segment isolation, port blocking, ip or MAC address locking, Access control list.
  • Endpoint Containment - disconnection of the infected system from any network connections, powering off the infected system, blocking rules in firewall, HIPS action.

Removing Malicious Artifacts

  • Malicious artifact is an object with malicious purposes.
  • Sysinternals process explorer can help with finding malicious processes
  • Netstat and process monitor can help detect malware which uses network connections
  • Sysinternals rootkit revealer can help detect rootkits or malware
  • If there is a back up this can be used to restore the pc to an uninfected state
  • Antiviruses can scan the computer to find and remove malware
  • Some antivirus solutions have standalone tools which dont require installation to run

Root cause and recovery

  • Take a forensic image to find the root cause so it can be analyzed later and the infected computer can be recovered and put back online.
  • Patching systems with program, operating system, and security updates to ensure that any vulnerabilities are fixed. Manual testing should be conducted after patching to ensure the fix has worked.
  • Disabling services that are not needed on a system.
  • Update endpoint detection and response (EDR), anti-virus (AV), intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS), and SIEM rules to allow for monitoring and alerting of similar activity that occurred during the incident.
  • Share intelligence regarding the incident, such as indicators of compromise, with other organizations to allow them to improve detection and perform threat exposure checks across their environments.