Recent malware attacks leverage PowerShell for post exploitation. Why? No EXE for antivirus or HIPS to squash, nothing saved to the filesystem, sites that use application whitelisting allow PowerShell, and little to no default logging.
Event logs continue to be the best source to centrally hunt malice in a Windows environment. Virtually all malware may be detected (including the latest PowerShell-fueled post exploitation) via event logs, after making small tweaks the logging configuration. DeepBlueCLI will go toe-to-toe with the latest attacks: this talk will explore the evidence malware leaves behind, leveraging Windows command line auditing (now natively available in Windows 7+) and PowerShell logging.
DeepBlueCLI is an open source framework that automatically parses Windows event logs, either on Windows (PowerShell version) or now on ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash and Kibana) running on Linux/Unix (Python version). ELK has revolutionized SIEMs, offering an open source alternative to expensive commercial solutions, and scaling to sizes many commercial SIEMs cannot reach.
Eric's career began in 1991 as a UNIX systems administrator for a small oceanographic communications company. He gained information security experience in a variety of industries, including research, education, power, Internet, and health care. He is now CTO of Backshore Communications, a company focusing on hunt teaming, intrusion detection, incident handling, and penetration testing. He is the lead author of the CISSP Study Guide. Eric is a graduate of the SANS Technology Institute with a master of science degree in information security engineering. In addition to the CISSP, he holds the prestigious GIAC Security Expert (GSE) certification as well as many other GIAC certifications. Eric also blogs about information security at www.ericconrad.com. @eric_conrad