Brianne Fahey

Brianne

Defending with Graphs

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Visualizations are powerful. When talking about data relationships, graphs are of keen interest. This spring I spent 4 months building out an idea and writing a whitepaper that is now published on the SANS Reading Room.

The paper is called Defending with Graphs: Create a Graph Data Map to Visualize Pivot Paths.

How about a two sentence synopsis?

The tl;dr is that there are several well developed examples of attackers thinking in graphs (see John Lambert’s article) and room for more ideas for how to defend with graphs. I wanted to demonstrate a use case for security defenders building a graph data map representation of their environment and querying it to improve their ability to respond quickly and directly to an incident.

A look at an image from my results.

I hope you will peruse this work and find it useful. It builds on the work of several researchers, developers, and thought leaders including Chris Sanders’ pivotmap tool, Colin O’Brien’s grapl platform, and Olaf Hartong’s ATTACK datamap tool.

Make Your Way There

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The animated movie Robots from 2005 hit a chord for me. I love the idea of the character Bigweld’s motto: “See a need, fill a need.”

Quote from the movie Robots

It feels good to get something completed.

I love the days I can end a workday on a the completion of a solid task. Technology jobs produce a lot of digital work products, but you don’t always get the sensation of finishing something that matters and having something to show for your work. Just because you can’t hold it in your hand does not mean it’s useless.

It feels good to be useful.

I just read a post on Medium from Darius Foroux called The Purpose of Life is Not Happiness: It’s Usefulness.

Darius makes a powerful statement we should all keep in mind; “Don’t take it too seriously. Don’t overthink it. Just DO something that’s useful.”. This is excellent advice in technology and security work. The questions and challenges are hard. Just jump in and get started. Each day we iterate on the last until we reach a place where we can look back and say; “I did a bunch of little things that mattered. I am making a difference.”.

Tomorrow, go out and do something. It will make a difference: no matter who sees it, no matter what it is, no matter what happens to it in the future. Keep looking for opportunities to make something that fills a need. In usefulness, there is happiness.

The Resourceful Will Find a Way

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Since I recently finished the SANS SEC-503 course passed my GCIA exam, I’m enjoying my first week in a while without evenings full of intense studying.  There have been fits of cleaning and organizing things I let go too long, and event a move to complete some of the small home improvement tasks I’ve put on the back burner.

This weekend I was working on a project.

For me, this means rolling a cart loaded with lock boxes filled with power tools into an alley and hoping for minimal interruptions.  When you have something you want, you make do with what you have to make it happen.

This is exactly what happened.

I made a plan and laid out my mobile workspace. I hefted the materials I needed into the alley. I fired up the cordless circular saw and it immediately died. I did some troubleshooting on the battery and found out it was dead. And the backup battery was lame. But I already staged my materials and with a temporary mobile workspace, you don’t roll it all up and go home until you are finished.

I experimented with other tools I had at my disposal although they were less fitted for the task than the circular saw. I dug through my lock boxes looking for other options.  Finally I spotted it – the jig saw I had not used for ages and had contemplated getting rid of in my last clean-through. If my project was the turkey and the cordless circular saw was an electric carving knife, the ancient jig saw was a rusty scissors.

Let me give you an idea of some of the things I worked around to finish the project.  Getting a heavy, heavy industrial cart over some PVC pipes clamped down across my pathway. Dead batteries for the set of cordless tools. Not a long enough cord for the jig saw. Broken clamp. A wheel fell off the dolly while I was moving a pile of wood. The lights in the trash room were out and it was pitch dark. You’d think I was the bad news bears of DIY tasks.

So I coaxed and I pushed and I persevered and I finished the job. It was not pretty. It was not at all as I had planned.  But it was finished.

I cleaned up my mobile work-site, made a list of things I needed to repair or replace before I came back for the next job. I celebrated the tiny victory of knocking a hard task off the list of things I wanted to finish.

I learned to be resourceful from my parents.

They encouraged us to stick with it.  They challenged us to find another way when we hit a wall. They did not freak out at the mess that was made when I attempted to create what I needed myself. I can be a hustler and a hard-worker, and when I take time to think I can be smart about it.  The willingness to be resourceful and either persevere or pivot to another way is important to me. It is one of the things I believe can translate into professional settings and differentiates between people who move on and people who finish hard tasks.

Try hard. Learn from the goods and the bads. Try again. Get better.

When a List Won’t Do

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A Microsoft Technet article by John Lambert from 2 years ago includes this quote, and I’ve seen it used many times since then:

“Defenders think in lists. Attackers think in graphs.”

To me, this statement means that there are multiple possible paths available to get to an end if you can pivot and reorient while working through an environment. The environment may have been designed in a systematic hierarchy to maximize organization efficiency, but that doesn’t mean a wily actor can’t create their own circuitous route.

I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been learning to dabble in Graph Databases. In fact, I am working to build a graph representation of the connections and pivots available in the logs and data typically available to an analyst in an investigation (inspired by one of my favorite parts of the Investigation Theory course).

Unlike a relational database, a graph database uses nodes, edges, and properties to build and describe relationships. Wikipedia describes the graph theory behind a graph database better than I can, but I put together the visualization below before my free trial of MindJet MindManager expired. If you can determine your nodes, labels, properties, and relationships – you can connect and visualize the net of assets and relationships in your scope. Let’s use the sample graph visualization of two colleagues names Bob and Cathy.

  • Nodes contain properties and are tagged with labels.
    • The person is a node, the property is their name and the labels are their position and their prestige.
  • Relationships connect nodes, have direction, and contain properties.
    • The relationships describe how the nodes (persons) are working and hiring.

I’ve been learning Neo4j to build a graph database.  Download this free Graph Databases ebook from O’Reilly to get started.  I’ve also watched some videos in an Intro to Neo4j course hosted by Lynda (which normally has a cost but can be accessed with my library card for free via the elearning offerings on my local library’s website). I’d also like to buy Learning Neo4j Graphs and Cypher book and video from Packt Publisher in the future.

In the starter use case I’m building out in my own Neo4j instance, the nodes are both data sources and data elements, and the relationships describe where the data elements are contained. The idea behind this is that if an analyst had one piece of data and wanted to get to another piece of data, they could explore the graph to see which nodes they have available to traverse in order to pivot the data from what you have to what you want.

For instance, if you have the IDS Alert available providing you a signature and protocol, but you need to know the details of the certificate used in the transaction, you can pivot fro the IDS alert through the PCAP and SSL Transaction to get to your destination.

I am still experimenting, I know my test data is imperfect.  Ideally, you could research the sources and elements available within your enterprise to create your Cypher code and output a visual database that allows you to look or query for a solution path. Somehow it feels much more impressive when you look at the connections for the data elements of a dozen or so different data sources at once.

This is a solid idea for a learning opportunity and a rough first implementation try. I’ll think on it some more and work to eventually hone something useful and repeatable that doesn’t take much effort to keep up to date. If you have any input, feel free to use the contact form on my website and reach out.

I Think, Therefore I Am An Analyst

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There are a lot of tools to learn in the cybersecurity trade. There are a lot of sources willing to teach you about those tools.  There are not many people interested in teaching you how to think like an analyst.

I just finished the 3rd course in my Chris Sanders’ Applied Network Defense trilogy: Investigation Theory. Before this course, I’d taken and reviewed Chris’ Effective Information Security Writing and Practical Packet Analysis.

Investigation Theory is a course designed to help an analyst develop a mindset to investigate any type of security event or alert. The course is built to take roughly 10 weeks and you can pace yourself to finish faster or slower.  Although it is offered fully online, Chris organizes the course so that a new group starts it together every few months.  The benefit of this is that no only do you have the ability to interact with the instructor Chris Sanders in the online course board, you also have the opportunity to post thoughts to and respond to questions from other students.  I definitely took something away from reading other students’ answers to Chris’s posted questions at the end of many lectures.

In addition to lectures, the course includes student community discussion, recommended reading, bonus lectures, and interactive investigation labs.

Nothing helps ideas stick better than hands-on practice.

The labs were challenging. I had to try most of them several times before I submitted the correct answer.  But I learned ideas of questions to ask and places to look for leads to those answers.

One of my favorite sections in the Investigation Theory course was built around explaining the value provided by different types of analysis data. It focused on the likely available sources in an investigation like packet captures, netflow data, IDS alerts, OSINT, and an armful of different log types. The lecture described the pros and cons of the source and highlighted opportunities to aggregate and pivot on data attributes provided.

I’m proud to have finished this course.  I would recommend it.  It is less technically specific than Practical Packet Analysis, but it is full of insights that will work for a security analyst no matter what tools and tactics you have experienced.

You can a course description, pricing, and registration information at the Applied Network Defense site.

Plan When You Can

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Back around the first of this year I sketched myself a learning plan. I committed myself to 2 scheduled learning events this year by paying for them up front.  I’m already a natural planner, but when you’re fronting the cash for a class yourself – you take your planning seriously.  I’m motivated to be better and I’m driven not to waste time, money, or chances to help get there.

My first milestone event is in April; the next course in my pursuit of a SANS certificate in Core Cybersecurity Engineering. Months ago I researched the course prerequisites and syllabus to brush up on or at least introduce myself to the topics that will be covered.  These courses are boot camp style, nearly 50 hours of lessons in 6 days, so I’ve got zero time to lose to being lost.

So I took a crack at experiencing packet analysis, watched through some targeted Hak5 playlists on YouTube, re-read my No Starch Press book covering The Practice of Network Security, tried out some open source IDS exercises online from Bro, and listened to some topical presentations from security cons recorded and posted on IronGeek.

Let me be honest, I am not amazing at any of these things.

But I would love to be and I believe that I can get there with practice and guidance.  That’s the point of learning with live, in-person classes.  You have access to an expert.  The better informed I am, the more meaningful and specific questions I can ask of the instructor.

I allowed myself to wander from the plan.

I’m only human, I took a few sidebars that ate into the prep time I had laid out.  I spent time blogging on my website.  I took advantage of temporary free access to an online Digital Forensics e-learning course trial that was offered by (ISC)2, (helpful to gain some free CPEs to keep my CISSP active). I started watching a course on Lynda about Neo4j graph databases so I could play with some visualizations.  I even sat on the couch to binge watch 2 entire seasons of This Is Us when I should have been on the computer.

I feel decent about my progress, bring on more of the hard stuff.

Make the Most of Thinking Differently

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I believe in the idea that diversity of thought, style, and skill is good for a team.  I try to keep in mind this quote I found attributed to Bill Nye.

My personal challenge is in listening well to others, asking good questions, and ultimately being open to changing my own perspective.

This is hard work.

I can always use inspiration and suggestions for practice to help me improve.  I recently found such a book called Collaborative Intelligence: Thinking with People Who Think Differently by Dawna Markova, Ph.D. and Angie McArthur at my local library.  After I read the borrowed library book, I purchased a copy for my personal bookshelf because I knew I would come back to this one and *gasp* might even want to write in this book.

 

The gist of the book is that if you understand how you or others are approaching the question, you can maximize the effectiveness of the thought.  Sometimes the problem needs focused concentration, sometimes sorting and organizing, and sometimes brainstorming – but we can all use a solid “thinking partner” to bring out the best results. The authors have translated their research into a model for determining and working best with each person’s Mind Patterns and Thinking Talents.

The first thing I enjoyed about this book was its ability to summarize the materials contained in each chapter within a table on the last page of the chapter.  Consider this the TL;DR of the book. The book comes to life for anyone reading it when it comes time to evaluate your own thinking styles. The authors even recommend what types of environments are most effective for generating types of thinking.  Here’s a preview of what a KVA Mind Pattern like me should keep in mind:

I’m definitely planning on using the supplemental materials available on the the Collaborative Intelligence website to have my immediate team take the quiz to determine your own mind pattern.  I’m looking forward to trying to put some of these Collaborative Intelligence practices to work.

Space to Work

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There are a lot of influences on an event.  Each of us have our own set of internal and external forces working on us as well.

My goal is to be able to draw from my headspace or my heartspace.

You know those days when your senses tingle to lead you to your lost keys and there’s no actual logic or reason to your discovery?  That’s your heartspace. Your intuition, instinct, and natural internal abilities drive from the heart.  You can close your eyes and lead from your heartspace with nothing but an idea and some imagination.

At other times nothing but numbers drive what you do next. You work smart with the tools you have at hand. You follow a procedure and endeavor to produce predictable results. You make a plan based on the likeliest outcome and use a tried and true technique to get there.  Some days you don’t want to chase a guess so you follow a trusted formula and lead with your headspace.

Both of these methods are good methods.  Finding a blend is even better.

I’m really in The Zone when I can work from both my headspace and heartspace. If I can build a plan based on the research, pay attention to the fails and the changes and then pivot into a new idea or a variation on the primary, I can persevere.  Work with your peers and mentors,  dig in to your headspace and your heartspace.  Make questions and find answers and keep trying – be it forward, backward, or sideways – till you get your conclusive point.

 

I put together the above image with my free trial of MindJet Mind Manager 2018.  I consider this a Venn diagram of the things that live within my own headspace and heartspace.

Find a Zone that works for you and build up your material understanding and experiential inclinations to grow it and support it.