Cyber kill chain

What is the cyber kill chain?

The cyber kill chain is based on the military’s kill chain, which is a step-by-step process for detecting and stopping enemy activity. The cyber kill chain, first developed by Lockheed Martin, outlines the various stages of several common cyberattacks and, as a result, the points at which the information security team can prevent, detect, or intercept attackers.

The cyber kill chain is designed to protect against sophisticated cyberattacks, also known as advanced persistent threats (APTs), in which adversaries spend a significant amount of time surveilling and planning an attack. To carry out their plan, these attacks typically use a combination of malware, ransomware, Trojans, spoofing, and social engineering techniques.

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Cyber kill chain steps

What is a cyber kill chain process? Let’s take a closer look at the seven steps of the cyber kill chain to see what questions you should be asking yourself to determine whether it’s a viable option for your organization.

Reconnaissance

At this point, criminals are attempting to determine which targets are (and are not) suitable. From the outside, they gather as much information as they can about your resources and network in order to determine whether the effort is worthwhile. They prefer a target that is relatively unguarded and contains valuable data. What information criminals can obtain about your company and how they may use it may surprise you.

names and contact information for your employees available online? (Are you certain? Consider social networks in addition to your corporate website.) These could be used for social engineering purposes, such as obtaining usernames and passwords. Is information about your web servers or physical locations available online? These could also be used for social engineering or to narrow down a list of potential exploits that could be used to gain access to your environment.

This is a difficult layer to manage, especially given the popularity of social networking. Hide sensitive information is a relatively inexpensive change, though being thorough in finding the information can be time-consuming.

Weaponization

During the Weaponization phase, the attacker develops an attack vector that can exploit a known vulnerability, such as remote access malware, ransomware, virus, or worm. During this phase, the attacker may also install back doors to allow them to continue accessing the system if their original point of entry is discovered and closed by network administrators.

Delivery

The intruder launches the attack during the Delivery step. The specific steps taken will be determined by the type of attack planned. For example, to advance the plan, the attacker may send email attachments or a malicious link. This activity can be combined with social engineering techniques to increase the campaign’s effectiveness.

Exploitation

The malicious code is executed within the victim’s system during the Exploitation phase.

Installation

The malware or other attack vector will be installed on the victim’s system immediately following the Exploitation phase. The threat actor has entered the system and can now take control, marking a turning point in the attack lifecycle.

Control and command

When a threat enters your network, its next task is to call home and wait for instructions. This could be to download additional components, but it’s more likely to be to communicate with a botmaster via a command and control (C&C) channel. In either case, network traffic is required, which means there is only one question to consider: Do you have an intrusion detection system set to alert you when new programmes connect to your network?

If the threat has progressed this far, it has altered the machine and will necessitate much more work from IT personnel. Some businesses or industries require forensics to be performed on the affected machines in order to determine what data has been stolen or tampered with. Those machines that have been affected will need to be cleaned or reimaged. If the data has been backed up and there is a standard corporate image that can be quickly replaced onto the machine, it can be less expensive and time-consuming.

Objective Actions

The intruder starts end-goal actions like data theft, data corruption, or data destruction.

While Lockheed Martin’s original cyber kill chain model is a good starting point for trying to model and defend against attacks, keep in mind that every IT deployment is different, and intrusion attacks do not always follow the steps in the model.

The attack landscape has shifted over time, and many have argued that the cyber kill chain, while useful, needed to be updated to account for the fact that the traditional perimeter has shifted—in many cases, vanished.

The Cyber Kill Chain’s Role in Cybersecurity

Despite some flaws, the Cyber Kill Chain is useful in assisting organisations in developing their cybersecurity strategy. As part of this model, businesses must implement services and solutions that enable them to:

Using threat intelligence techniques, detect attackers at each stage of the threat life cycle.

Prevent unauthorized users from gaining access.

Prevent unauthorized users from sharing, saving, altering, exfiltrating, or encrypting sensitive data.

Real-time response to attacks

Stop an attacker’s lateral movement within the network.

How does Cyber Kill Chain defend against attacks?

Organizations can use a cyber kill chain or cyber-attack simulation platform to identify and close security gaps in their systems in seconds.

Here’s how simulating a cyber kill chain can help you avoid cyber attacks:

1. Model Cybersecurity Attacks

To identify vulnerabilities and threats, real-world cybersecurity attacks can be simulated across all vectors. This includes simulating cyber-attacks via email gateways, web gateways, web application firewalls, and other similar mechanisms.

2. Examine the Controls to Find Security Gaps

This entails evaluating simulations and identifying risk areas. Simulation platforms provide a detailed risk score and report for each vector.

3. Address and Close Cyber Security Gaps

The following step is to close the security gaps discovered in the previous step. This may entail actions such as installing patches and changing configurations to reduce the number of threats and vulnerabilities in the organization’s system.

Modern Cyberattacks: Privilege and Vulnerabilities

According to Forrester Research, privileged credentials are used in approximately 80% of today’s security breaches. BeyondTrust published an updated model of the cyber-attack chain in 2017, along with guidance on how to dismantle an attack at each step of the way, to better illustrate the privilege threat component of modern cyber-attacks.

Here are the key components of the BeyondTrust Cyber-Attack Chain model, as well as tactics for countering the attack at each stage.

Step One: Exploiting the Perimeter

These are the first attempts to gain access to the systems and data of an IT organization. Typical methods include:

Exploiting known flaws in software and hardware

Social engineering and phishing are used to obtain passwords and login information.

Malware and downloads that install and grant unauthorised network access

Direct hacking entails searching for open ports or other external access points.

Step 2: Escalation and Privilege Hijacking

Password sharing and shared accounts should be avoided. When accounts and passwords are shared, it facilitates lateral movement and hijacking. Privileged password management solutions enable organisations to enforce best practices for password security while identifying and removing shared accounts and default passwords.

Make the least privilege mandatory. Again, limiting user privileges aids in thwarting an attacker’s every move.

All privileged user, session, and file activities should be monitored and audited. By logging all privileged activity and implementing privileged session monitoring and management (which allows you to pause or kill suspicious sessions), you can analyse, alert, report on, and potentially stop any suspicious or unwanted activity.

Step 3 Exfiltration and Lateral Movement

The hacker attempts to progress through the system by acquiring more privileges/privileged accounts and discovering other exploits and vulnerabilities. Finally, the intruder zigzags through the network, user accounts, data, and systems as needed to complete their mission (s).

At this stage, how to dismantle or contain an attack:

To detect in-progress attacks, correlate and analyse user and asset behaviour. This step necessitates the complete integration of privileged access management (PAM) and vulnerability management (VM). The more comprehensive the threat and behavioural analytics, the more likely it is that you will be able to outmanoeuvre attackers and stop breaches in their tracks by changing security safeguards (such as removing rights or access)

Conclusion

One of the most common mistakes made by organisations today is leaving cybersecurity vulnerabilities open to security attacks. Continuous security validation across the cyber kill chain can assist businesses in identifying, preventing, stopping, and preparing for such attacks.