MidReal Story
It was well after midnight and I was sitting in the Network Operations Center (NOC) of our company’s headquarters. The NOC was a dimly lit room with rows of server racks and monitors lining the walls. The servers hummed and the monitors glowed, casting an eerie light on my two colleagues, Alex and Mark, who were deep in conversation and joking around as they went about their work. I was a bit of a night owl, and I didn’t mind the fact that I was usually the only one on shift after hours. In fact, I took advantage of the quiet to do some extra reading and research, which is why I was in the NOC that night. I had been browsing through some security alerts when something caught my eye: an internal server was making an unusual number of outbound connections to external hosts. This type of alert wasn’t terribly uncommon, but it was usually a sign that the server had been compromised in some way. What concerned me most about this alert was that it was coming from a server that didn’t generally communicate with the outside world. The network monitoring tool I used didn’t provide much detail beyond the fact that the server was making hundreds of outbound connections. I needed to investigate further to determine if this was a false alarm, or if something more serious was going on. I opened up our network monitoring tools and started looking for the affected server number. Our monitoring tool had a complex interface that took some getting used to, but after working with it for so long, I knew how to navigate through it quickly. I scrolled through the long list of servers until I found the one that had triggered the alert. The server number indicated that it was located only a few racks away from me on the data center floor. I made a mental note to take a closer look at it later to see if I could spot anything out of the ordinary. In the meantime, I accessed the server’s logs to see if I could find any more information on the traffic it was generating. I started by looking at what applications were running on the server and where they were connecting to. I noticed that there were several processes that were making outbound connections, some to external hosts that were associated with well-known file sharing services, which in itself wasn’t necessarily unusual. But as I started to dig deeper into the logs and traffic patterns, it became clear that something more suspicious was going on. The server had indeed been compromised and taken over by an attacker, who had been using it as a proxy to communicate with a large number of external hosts. This was not good. We had been dealing with a persistent threat actor out of Iran for several months, and while we usually saw evidence of their activity in our email system, this time the attacker had managed to get their hands on an internal server in our data center, which gave them even more access and visibility into our network.
Scenario: you are an incident responder performing digital forensics in a compromised network and you discover an iranian threat actor
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It was well after midnight and I was sitting in the Network Operations Center (NOC) of our company’s headquarters.The NOC was a dimly lit room with rows of server racks and monitors lining the walls.The servers hummed and the monitors glowed, casting an eerie light on my two colleagues, Alex and Mark, who were deep in conversation and joking around as they went about their work.I was a bit of a night owl, and I didn’t mind the fact that I was usually the only one on shift after hours.In fact, I took advantage of the quiet to do some extra reading and research, which is why I was in the NOC that night.I had been browsing through some security alerts when something caught my eye: an internal server was making an unusual number of outbound connections to external hosts.This type of alert wasn’t terribly uncommon, but it was usually a sign that the server had been compromised in some way.What concerned me most about this alert was that it was coming from a server that didn’t generally communicate with the outside world.The network monitoring tool I used didn’t provide much detail beyond the fact that the server was making hundreds of outbound connections.I needed to investigate further to determine if this was a false alarm, or if something more serious was going on.I opened up our network monitoring tools and started looking for the affected server number.Our monitoring tool had a complex interface that took some getting used to, but after working with it for so long, I knew how to navigate through it quickly.I scrolled through the long list of servers until I found the one that had triggered the alert.The server number indicated that it was located only a few racks away from me on the data center floor.I made a mental note to take a closer look at it later to see if I could spot anything out of the ordinary.In the meantime, I accessed the server’s logs to see if I could find any more information on the traffic it was generating.I started by looking at what applications were running on the server and where they were connecting to.I noticed that there were several processes that were making outbound connections, some to external hosts that were associated with well-known file sharing services, which in itself wasn’t necessarily unusual.But as I started to dig deeper into the logs and traffic patterns, it became clear that something more suspicious was going on.The server had indeed been compromised and taken over by an attacker, who had been using it as a proxy to communicate with a large number of external hosts.This was not good.We had been dealing with a persistent threat actor out of Iran for several months, and while we usually saw evidence of their activity in our email system, this time the attacker had managed to get their hands on an internal server in our data center, which gave them even more access and visibility into our network.
I continued my analysis and eventually found an unexpected surprise: The infected server wasn’t just communicating with other hosts; it had also been turned into a command-and-control node!In other words, this wasn’t just a proxy; it was also calling out to other infected machines and managing them.The stealthy malware running on the server was designed to hide its presence and evade detection by traditional antivirus programs, which meant that we might have a much bigger problem on our hands than we originally thought.I held my breath as I continued my investigation, my heart racing as I waited for more information to appear on my screen.I could see that the malware process was still active and running on the server, even though we had been alerted to its presence several hours ago.When I checked what it was doing, my jaw dropped: it was communicating with dozens of external hosts!Most of these appeared to be regular consumer-grade computers, but there were also several within Iran’s IP address space!That realization made my pulse quicken even further; Iran is well-known for its state-sponsored cyber warfare campaigns, and just recently we had seen reports that hackers working on behalf of the Iranian government had been targeting critical infrastructure networks in both the United States and Middle East.At that moment, it hit me: were we being targeted by a hacker out of Iran?And if so, how much damage had they done and how long had they been inside our network?I continued to monitor the infected server, trying to decide what to do next.The malware was still running and communicating with its command-and-control server, but it wasn’t doing much else besides that.It hadn’t dropped any additional files on the server or executed any other commands.It seemed to be content to just sit there and be quiet.This gave me some hope that it hadn’t done anything else malicious, but at the same time, it also made me nervous because it was so hard to detect and it could be doing something that I just wasn’t seeing.For example, it could be siphoning off sensitive data from our network, or waiting for a signal from its command-and-control server to wreak havoc.My mind was racing with all the different possibilities of what might happen if the malware was able to get a foothold in our network, and I knew that I needed to act fast to contain the threat.But the more I thought about it, the more complicated the situation seemed.The malware was still running in memory, which meant it could be difficult to remove or contain without rebooting the server.And even if we did reboot the server, there was no guarantee that the malware wouldn’t still be there.Based on what I knew about the malware so far, it seemed to have several different components, each of which was designed to hide its presence and make it difficult to detect or remove.I wasn’t sure if I could fully trust our antivirus software to remove all of them, especially since the malware had managed to evade detection for so long.The malware also seemed to be very persistent, as it was able to restart itself every time I tried to kill it.And finally, it was communicating with a large number of external servers, which meant that our network could be more compromised than we realized.All of these factors made it difficult to know how best to proceed, and I knew that I needed to be careful not to make any rash decisions.As I stared at my screen and pondered what to do next, I was startled by a loud beep, which indicated that a new alert had come in.
I quickly switched over to the alerting system and saw that it was yet another alert from the server that I was monitoring.This time, the alert was for an outbound connection to an external server located in China.I immediately began examining the details of the alert to see what else I could learn, and noticed that it was for an HTTP connection over port 443, which is commonly used for secure web traffic.This surprised me because so far, all of the other connections that I had seen from the server were over non-standard ports.And when I looked at the destination IP address, it didn’t resolve to a domain name, which meant that the server was communicating directly with the IP address rather than making a request to a web server and then being redirected to another server.I decided to take a closer look at the server to see what might be causing the alert.As I combed through the logs and examined the network traffic, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and there were no signs of malware or any other suspicious activity.That’s strange, I thought to myself as I continued my investigation, If there really is something on this server making outbound connections to external servers, I should be able to see it here.But as far as I could tell, everything looked completely normal.And then it hit me: maybe this server is compromised by an advanced persistent threat group.APT groups are known for their ability to remain undetected and blend into normal network traffic.As I thought back on all the different things I had seen on this server so far – the non-standard ports, the encrypted traffic over common ports – it all started to make more sense.This wasn’t just some random malware; this was a sophisticated and well-funded adversary who had specifically targeted our network.And if they were able to compromise one server like this, it was possible that they could have also compromised other servers and systems as well.As soon as I realized the full implications of what I had found, I knew I needed to get my colleagues involved.I quickly called Alex and Mark over to my desk and showed them everything I had found so far.“This is bad,” I said to Alex and Mark as they looked over my shoulder at my screen.“They’re already inside our network.”“How do you know?” replied Mark.“It’s not like we have any actual evidence that they’re doing anything bad.”“I know,” I said.“But look at these logs.This server is now communicating with a whole bunch of external hosts that it has never talked to before.It’s like they’re probing our network for other vulnerable systems.”Alex and Mark both nodded solemnly as they continued to look over my screen.I could tell that they were starting to realize the seriousness of the situation too.“So what do we do now?” asked Mark.“Well,” I replied, “I’m going to disconnect this server from the network first, just to make sure they can’t do any further damage.Then I’ll take a closer look at the logs from the other systems in this rack to see if I can find anything similar.Meanwhile, I want you and Alex to keep an eye on our other systems and let me know if you see anything suspicious.”“Got it,” said Alex.“We’ll keep an eye out for anything unusual.”As Alex and Mark left to go back to their desks, I quickly returned my focus to the server I was investigating.I knew what I needed to do next; it was just a matter of getting it done.I opened up a new terminal window and typed in the command to disconnect the server from the network.After I hit enter, I watched as the screen filled with a flurry of activity.
