If you use O365, you need to learn about password spray. Want to see some campaigns against you? Try #AzureSentinel--you can connect your O365 data for free. Here are some common patterns.
👇👇👇
Attacker uses a formulaic Microsoft Office User Agent string.
Attacker using IMAP interface. Look for CBAInPROD from invalid login sources.
🔗gcits.com/knowledge-base…
Attacker using a dictionary of mobile browser User Agent strings.
Here is a query that looks for attackers successfully guessing a password. You can see the AAD error code changes to 50057 when they guess the cred (b/c the account is disabled). It also calculates the distance b/w the attacker IP and a "headquarters" IP (rosettacode.org/wiki/Haversine…)
This query shows which accounts are being tried by location. Even if you are not currently being targeted by a sophisticated actor, password spray is part of Internet Radiation. There is a long tail of IPs used to sneak under the radar of volumetric detections.
Use of invalid/rare UA strings is a time honored technique for seeing malicious activity. Like this use of Zune:
I talked about how incidents can teach powerful lessons and contain important truths for defenders.
I talked about while it is often romanced that offense has a richer toolset compared to the singular metaphor for defense ("the shield"). Defense has many creative ideas within it as well.
I've had a lot of neat employee moments at Microsoft. here's one of them.
👇
It was Feb 4, 2014. The board had just named @satyanadella as CEO.
📎news.microsoft.com/2014/02/04/mic…
An email said he was going to make some remarks in a building across campus in like 30 minutes. I jumped in my car.
The crowd filled all available space. Ballmer was high energy as usual. It was 2014 so, you know, I had my Windows Phone with me.
Found one of my Microsoft notebooks 📔 from 2005. Here are a few pages on what was on my mind then.
The Longhorn (aka Windows Vista) security plan.
Parsers were having many issues. I put this slide together to create awareness about the pattern we were seeing in MSRC at the time.
Occasionally I printed small versions of my slides and inserted them into my notebooks so I could easily socialize to people in 1-1 conversations.