Threat Hunting

This section is under development

Objective

The definition is not fully agreed upon, however is described in a similar fashion by multiple sources.[1][2][3][4][5]

"Threat hunting is a proactive and iterative approach to detecting threats." (Lee and Bianco, 2016)

The objective of Threat Hunting[6] is a proactive search of systems for adversaries and compromise. Whereas Continuous Monitoring is a reactive service, Threat Hunting strives to actively search logs, controls, countermeasures and activity to identify signs of compromise before they are detected.

Hunting activity is related to other services as it feeds into Content Engineering, Continuous Monitoring, Log Management and Compliance and Risk Management.

Hunting also receives inputs from Threat Intelligence, Enterprise Intelligence, Content Engineering and Risk Management.

Process

These processes are ranked by complexity, starting with the least complex to the most complex.

• Known IOC Hunting

"Hunters should be careful about relying too much on IOCs. In the industry today there are many threat data feeds that lack the context to make them true indicators." (Lee and Bianco, 2016)

• Hypothesis Method[7][8]
• Exploratory Data Science[9][10][11][12]

Tooling

• SIEM, log management or other log collection and analysis tools
• Data analytics tools
• There is a vast array of tools capable of performing threat hunting & assisting with analysis.

Ticketing

From experience, Threat Hunting can be ticketing using multiple methods including existing ticket systems. They should,however, be notated as "Threat Hunting" so that effective metrics can obtained.

In addition, it is advisable to keep records of successful versus unsuccessful threat hunts.

Citations

Robert M. Lee and David Bianco. 2016. Generating Hypotheses for Successful Threat Hunting. Retrieved from https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/threats/generating-hypotheses-successful-threat-hunting-37172

Additional Resources

https://www.threathunting.net/ - Has done a good job of collecting resources and special thanks to them.