Offensive Security: Cyber Threat Intelligence Enrichment with Counterintelligence and Counterattack

• Published in: IEEE access 2022, Vol.10, p.1-1
• Main Authors: Rana, Muhammad Usman, Ellahi, Osama, Alam, Masoom, Webber, Julian L., Mehbodniya, Abolfazl, Khan, Shawal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: BSSID; Computational modeling; Computer hacking; Computer security; Counterattack; Counterintelligence; Cyber Deception; Cyber threat intelligence; Cyberattack; Cybersecurity; Financial industry; Honeypot; Intelligence gathering; IP (Internet Protocol); IP networks; Monitoring; Persistence; Privacy; RDP; SSH; Threat evaluation; Virtual private networks; VPN
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3213644

Cyber-attacks on financial institutions and corporations are on the rise, particularly during pandemics. These attacks are becoming more sophisticated. Reports of hacking activities against government and commercial sector organisations have garnered a lot of attention in the last several years. By design, the focus of Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) is exclusively defensive. This is because most of the CTI-derived analysis output is intended to prevent breaches or facilitate early detection. So, there is a need to have a new mechanism for unmasking the attacker. In this research, we demonstrate cyber threat intelligence enrichment with counterintelligence and counterattack combined with certain new methods to exploit the adversary's vulnerability and fully control the attacker's system. Attackers use a VPN to establish an anonymous connection. A VPN creates a secure "tunnelling" to the internet, with the VPN server acting as a middleman between the attacker and the web. This provides anonymity because the attacker's IP address seems to be that of the VPN rather than his own, masking the IP address. So, hackers used this application to create persistence because it is automatically launched each time a computer is restarted. As a result, we are attempting to eliminate the persistence by removing it from the startup and registry. This research will help firms detect and identify an assault in its earliest phases, allowing them to respond accordingly. This project will develop new and innovative strategies to bypass VPNs and other security measures in order to obtain correct source information. Companies will be able to identify new methods by which their systems are penetrated and rapidly harden them. Using counterattack and counterintelligence, a proposed technique can bypass a VPN and get adversarial intel. The main goal of this research is to find the attacker's footprints or tracks and find out why the attack was planned in the first place.