Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today. We're looking at things
Speaker 1: a bit differently cybersecurity wise, moving beyond the usual stuff
Speaker 1: like patching in firewalls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're diving into something called offensive countermeasures exactly.
Speaker 1: The author of our source material uses this analogy shepherds
Speaker 1: versus sheep and wolves, suggesting we should maybe be more
Speaker 1: active like Shepherd's right.
Speaker 2: We've got this pdf from John Strand, offensive Countermeasures the
Speaker 2: Art of Active Defense, and the plan is to pull
Speaker 2: out the really interesting, maybe surprising ideas about actively defending yourself.
Speaker 1: We want those aha moments, I guess, without getting totally
Speaker 1: bogged down in the weeds.
Speaker 2: That's the goal. Find the insights that make you look
Speaker 2: at security in a new way.
Speaker 1: And right off the bat you get a feel for
Speaker 1: the author. There's a dedication to family and someone called
Speaker 1: DC from the miss R. It feels well personal, it does.
Speaker 2: And it's worth remembering who John Strand is Black Hill's
Speaker 2: Information Security Sans Institute. This isn't just theory, it's grounded
Speaker 2: in like actual expers.
Speaker 1: He even gives a shout out to his team at
Speaker 1: bhis for doing the heavy lifting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a team effort, practical stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the big idea is shifting gears right from
Speaker 1: just reacting to well considering more active steps. But there's
Speaker 1: a huge caveat, isn't there?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, He hammers this home. Do not be evil.
Speaker 2: This is definitely not about becoming some kind of digital vigilante.
Speaker 1: So it's not just hack the hackers back.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. Strand wants to open up the
Speaker 2: conversation about what responsible active defense could look like. He
Speaker 2: lays out options, a whole range, really.
Speaker 1: And he mentions that you know, even the basic security
Speaker 1: advice often doesn't get fully implemented.
Speaker 2: Right, So jumping straight to active measures is a big step.
Speaker 2: And there's that asymmetry thing. He talks about how hacking
Speaker 2: back is generally seen as well wrong.
Speaker 1: But he wants to explore the legal ways this might
Speaker 1: actually improve security. So okay, where does he start navigating
Speaker 1: this minefield?
Speaker 2: Logically, he starts with the law you absolutely have to
Speaker 2: this is foundational, and he warns straight away don't just
Speaker 2: jump to hacking the attackers. He uses a few court
Speaker 2: cases to show where the lines are currently drawn and crucially,
Speaker 2: where defenders can easily step over them.
Speaker 1: Okay, first case us versus heck and camp. What's the
Speaker 1: key point there?
Speaker 2: Well, the interesting thing is what the court decided was
Speaker 2: okay versus what wasn't In that case, just logging a
Speaker 2: MS address that unique hardware ID wasn't seen as a
Speaker 2: privacy violation.
Speaker 1: Okay, so log into hardware ID. Fine. But then there's
Speaker 1: the other case Susan Clemens Jeffrey versus Absolute.
Speaker 2: Software exactly, and that one went the other way. It
Speaker 2: involved tracking a stolen laptop, sure, but also recording keystrokes,
Speaker 2: chat messages, even webcam photos, very personal stuff.
Speaker 1: Ah, so that crossed the line a big one.
Speaker 2: The lesson is clear, tracking hardware location might be okay,
Speaker 2: but intercepting communications that hits federal wiretapping laws. Like the
Speaker 2: judge said, finding hardware versus eavesdropping fundamentally different. It really
Speaker 2: drives home that do not be evil point, good intentions,
Speaker 2: don't exp use illegal interception.
Speaker 1: Got it? Then he brings up E Hippie versus the
Speaker 1: WTO That sounds specific.
Speaker 2: It was an odd one. An ISP basically reflected denial
Speaker 2: of service attack back at the source, the e Hippie site.
Speaker 2: What was really strange was that people had actually signed
Speaker 2: up to DDOSS. The wto Wow.
Speaker 1: So volunteers for a cyber attack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just highlights how messy it gets with distributed
Speaker 2: attacks and what responsibility intermediaries have.
Speaker 1: And then the Microsoft boughtnet takedowns waladac Russ doc Keilly
Speaker 1: hose those are huge. What's the legal takeaway for the
Speaker 1: average company?
Speaker 2: That's the critical point. Microsoft went through legal channels, got
Speaker 2: restraining orders, used art CEO statutes, powerful stuff, but in
Speaker 2: doing so, they essentially took control of systems belonging to
Speaker 2: thousands of individuals. The owners of those infected bought computers
Speaker 2: without their direct consent.
Speaker 1: So even with court orders, it's controversial, very.
Speaker 2: And Strand's point is Microsoft has resources and legal clout
Speaker 2: most organizations can only dream of trying to replicate. That
Speaker 2: is legally perilous and probably impractical for almost everyone else.
Speaker 2: It's not a playbook for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: He also looks ahead, mentioning potential laws that might allow
Speaker 1: him attacking back, but he's worried.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his big concern is protecting the innocent bystanders, those
Speaker 2: intermediary victim machines, the bots. If laws allow broad hackback authority,
Speaker 2: how do you ensure those systems aren't just collateral damage.
Speaker 1: So it all comes back to restraint.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, do not be evil, tread very very carefully.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the legal side is definitely complex. Let's move
Speaker 1: on to some of the actual countermeasures he discusses. First up,
Speaker 1: protecting IP and security through obscurity. Isn't that usually frowned upon?
Speaker 2: It often is. Yeah, people tend to dismiss it, saying
Speaker 2: changing a port or server banner doesn't really stop anyone serious.
Speaker 2: But Strand offers a different perspective, framing it using the
Speaker 2: Odie loop observe, orient, decide act. That's kind of the
Speaker 2: attacker's decision cycle.
Speaker 1: Okay, Odie loop. How does obscurity fit in?
Speaker 2: Well? The idea is that even simple obscurity tricks can
Speaker 2: mess with the attackers observe and orient phases. If your
Speaker 2: system doesn't look like what they expect, they have to
Speaker 2: spend more time figuring it out.
Speaker 1: So it slows them down buys.
Speaker 2: You time exactly that extra effort, that delay could be
Speaker 2: enough time for your detection systems to catch something. He
Speaker 2: uses that great example of iBuyer changing their server banner
Speaker 2: to look like a Commodore sixty four.
Speaker 1: A Commodore sixty four.
Speaker 2: Serious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds silly, but it could easily trip up
Speaker 1: an automated scanner looking for say Apache or ICEE. The
Speaker 1: scanner might just give up and move on. It's not
Speaker 1: about being unhackable, it's about increasing their work.
Speaker 2: Factor, making it harder for them to get oriented. I see.
Speaker 2: He also mentions user agent strings. That seems pretty basic.
Speaker 1: It is, but it's another layer. You look at the
Speaker 1: user agent strings in your weblogs. That's how browsers identify themselves.
Speaker 1: You can spot known bad tools or you know, less
Speaker 1: sophisticated attackers who don't bother changing.
Speaker 2: The defaults so you can fil ter osso noise that way.
Speaker 1: Right, A skilled attacker can spoof it easily. Short, but
Speaker 1: it catches the low hanging fruit, and it's something you
Speaker 1: can easily show management, which is sometimes helpful.
Speaker 2: Okay, Moving into more active stuff, deception and misdirection setting traps.
Speaker 2: Basically pretty much, he talks about annoyance techniques, things like
Speaker 2: c Symmetria Maze Runner. These tools help you deploy Honeypot's
Speaker 2: decoy systems, but also create fake breadcrumbs to lure attackers
Speaker 2: towards them.
Speaker 1: Because just setting up a honeypot doesn't mean anyone will find.
Speaker 2: It, right exactly. You need to make it discoverable, but
Speaker 2: only by the people you want to discover it.
Speaker 1: And then there's the uh, mister Clippy, show us the
Speaker 1: way tactic that sounds amusing it is.
Speaker 2: It uses php IDs, an intrusion detection system for web apps,
Speaker 2: but instead of just blocking an attack, it responds with
Speaker 2: the old Microsoft paper clip character Clippy offering a helpful
Speaker 2: link to o WASP security resources.
Speaker 1: Huh so it mocked the attacker a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit of psychological disruption. Maybe makes them
Speaker 2: question if they're dealing with something unexpected. Did messes with
Speaker 2: their ODA loop again?
Speaker 1: He also suggests a random URL generator. How does that help?
Speaker 2: That's aimed at automated website scanners. If your site starts
Speaker 2: generating tons of plausible looking but non existent URLs, the
Speaker 2: scanner can get completely bogged down.
Speaker 1: He just keeps chasing fake pages. Right.
Speaker 2: It takes forever to crawl, generates masses of useless data
Speaker 2: and might just exhaust the scanner's resources or time limits.
Speaker 2: It obscures your real site structure.
Speaker 1: Okay, now we get to honeypots and honeypots these sound
Speaker 1: like core concepts. Let's start with honeypots, right.
Speaker 2: Honeypots are decoy systems or services. They look real, maybe
Speaker 2: even valuable. The key is no legitimate user should ever
Speaker 2: interact with a honeypot.
Speaker 1: So any traffic hitting it is automatically suspicious.
Speaker 2: Highly suspicious. Yes, it's great for detection, especially for attackers
Speaker 2: already inside your network, and you can learn a lot
Speaker 2: by watching what they do in the honeypot, what tools
Speaker 2: they use, what data they're after. Are they just looking
Speaker 2: for storage or are they after your critical data?
Speaker 1: That makes sense? He mentions the Modern Honeypot Network MHN.
Speaker 2: Yeah. MHN is a framework that makes deploying different kinds
Speaker 2: of honeypots like SSAH honeypots, Web honeypots much much easier.
Speaker 2: It automates a lot of the setup.
Speaker 1: So it lowers the barrier to entry for using.
Speaker 2: Honeypots, definitely makes it more accessible.
Speaker 1: Then there's libre Atarpit sounds sticky.
Speaker 2: It is. It's designed to slow down automated scanning, especially
Speaker 2: things like malware spreading. Internally, if something tries to connect
Speaker 2: to an IP address or port that Librea is watching.
Speaker 1: It responds really slowly.
Speaker 2: Exactly, it just drags out the connection process. Tying up
Speaker 2: the scanner's resources makes a scanning incredibly inefficient and might
Speaker 2: trigger alerts because the connections stay open for so long.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, honeyports, how are they different?
Speaker 2: Honeyports are more targeted than full honeypots. Instead of a
Speaker 2: whole fake system, it's just a single specific unused network
Speaker 2: port on a real system like port.
Speaker 1: One twentive if nothing normally uses it.
Speaker 2: Right, And the really clever part Strand talks about is
Speaker 2: using them for dynamic blacklisting.
Speaker 1: Dynamic blacklisting so blocking attackers automatically based on them hitting
Speaker 1: the honeypot, Yes.
Speaker 2: But with a specific trigger. Typically it only blocks the
Speaker 2: IP address if the attacker completes a full TCP connection
Speaker 2: to the honeypot.
Speaker 1: Why the full connection? Why not just any packet?
Speaker 2: Because just sending a single packet like in a basic
Speaker 2: syn scan is really easy to spoof. An attacker could
Speaker 2: send packets pretending to be from a legitimate IP address
Speaker 2: and trick your system into blocking someone innocent requiring a
Speaker 2: full connection. The whole three way hunt take makes that
Speaker 2: much harder. It shows more deliberate intent.
Speaker 1: Ah Okay, that makes it more reliable. He mentions, IP
Speaker 1: kung Fu and deny hosts here right.
Speaker 2: Ipkung Fu has scripts for hardening Linux firewalls, ipptables, and
Speaker 2: deny hosts. Specifically, watches for repeated failed logins like SSH,
Speaker 2: brute force attempts and blocks those ips their related concepts.
Speaker 1: And he actually gives examples of setting up a basic honeyport.
Speaker 1: Let's walk through the Linux one briefly. How does that work?
Speaker 2: It's surprisingly simple. You use a tool called netcat and
Speaker 2: entry to listen on an unused port, say twenty twenty five. Okay,
Speaker 2: Then you'd tell netcat that when someone successfully connects makes
Speaker 2: that full TCP connection, it should run.
Speaker 1: A little script and the script does what.
Speaker 2: The example script basically grabs the connecting IP address and
Speaker 2: then uses the iptable's command the Linux firewall to instantly
Speaker 2: add a rule that blocks all further TCP traffic from
Speaker 2: that attacker's IP to your system.
Speaker 1: So one connection to the honeyport and they're blocked from
Speaker 1: everything else.
Speaker 2: Pretty much.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He shows how a simple syn scam won't trigger it,
Speaker 2: but a tool trying to make a full connection gets
Speaker 2: immediately firewalled off.
Speaker 1: And there's a similar method for Windows using PowerShell. In
Speaker 1: his firewall.
Speaker 2: Yep, same principle. Listen on a port and if a
Speaker 2: full connection happens, run a PowerShell command to add a
Speaker 2: block rule to the Windows firewall. It's very practical.
Speaker 1: He does mention a limitation, though, about spoofed connections.
Speaker 2: If an attacker is sophisticated enough to fully spoof the
Speaker 2: TCP handshake, potentially predicting sequence numbers and so on, they
Speaker 2: might be able to trigger the block while hiding their
Speaker 2: real IP, but he notes this is generally much harder
Speaker 2: to do effectively, especially against a live system.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not foolproof against really advanced attackers, but good
Speaker 1: for most exactly.
Speaker 2: And you could add to other layers, like monitoring those
Speaker 2: firewall rules for weird patterns.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's shift to web traps like fake websites to
Speaker 1: catch scanners.
Speaker 2: That's the idea. Tools like spider trap or web Labyrinth.
Speaker 2: Spider Trap can generate a maze of random fake links,
Speaker 2: making a website look infinitely.
Speaker 1: Deep, so a scanner just goes on forever.
Speaker 2: Or it can use a word list, maybe one commonly
Speaker 2: used by attackers to create fake directories that look interesting
Speaker 2: but are just traps. It swamps the scanner with junk data.
Speaker 1: You can even point to it in your robots dot txt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, legitimate search engines will ignore it, but an attacker
Speaker 2: might see admin backup trap in robots dot txt and
Speaker 2: think ooh interesting and walk right in web labyrinth.
Speaker 1: Similar idea.
Speaker 2: Similar but phke based, so easy to deploy. It can
Speaker 2: also log crawler activity to a database, which is great
Speaker 2: for analysis. Plus, it can return random HTTP status codes,
Speaker 2: not just four or fours, making it harder for scanners
Speaker 2: to tell what's real and what's fake. It can even
Speaker 2: throw in fake email addresses as bait clever.
Speaker 1: He also mentions creating infinitely recursive directories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a neat trick. You create a symbolic link
Speaker 2: inside a directory that points back to the directory itself.
Speaker 2: If a tool tries to recursively list files in there,
Speaker 2: like metasplit's.
Speaker 1: Materpreter might get stuck in a loop.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It can freeze the tool, eat up resources, and
Speaker 2: make the malicious process really obvious to defenders. Simple but
Speaker 2: effective against certain tools.
Speaker 1: What about trip wirelike defenses? Sounds like file integrity monitoring
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: He talks about crypto locked and crypto locked in. They
Speaker 2: work by placing special hidden trip files in critical locations.
Speaker 1: Files that should never be touched.
Speaker 2: Right. If anything accesses or modifies these trip files, it
Speaker 2: triggers an alert logging maybe even shuts down the offending process.
Speaker 2: Using the hunter module and crypto locting, it's like a
Speaker 2: silent alarm on your crown jewels.
Speaker 1: Any access is a red flash.
Speaker 2: Very strong indicator.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay. Detecting human interaction this seems different.
Speaker 2: It's more behavioral deny hosts, which we mentioned blocks ips
Speaker 2: after too many failed logins, but you must whiteless trusted
Speaker 2: ips first or you'll lock yourself out.
Speaker 1: Good point.
Speaker 2: Then there's human dot pie. This tries to spot if
Speaker 2: a human is using a service account. Service account should
Speaker 2: be automated, right usually yeah, So if human dot pie
Speaker 2: sees things like typos in commands entered via a bashshell
Speaker 2: on that account, it suggests a person might have compromised
Speaker 2: it and is using it interactively looking for.
Speaker 1: Those human errors on accounts that shouldn't have them. Interesting. Now,
Speaker 1: stealthy blocking.
Speaker 2: This is in visiport. It's like a honeyport, but instead
Speaker 2: of actively rejecting the connection until telling the attacker you're blocked,
Speaker 2: it just stops responding silently, adds them to a blacklist.
Speaker 1: So the attackers scan just hangs. They don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: they've been blocked exactly.
Speaker 2: They might think the host is just down or unreliable.
Speaker 2: The idea is they're less likely to immediately switch IP
Speaker 2: addresses if they don't get that explicit rejection message.
Speaker 1: And you can configure it to make some ports still
Speaker 1: look open to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to enhance the deception, make them waste more time
Speaker 2: probing ports that will never respond properly. He also quickly
Speaker 2: mentions Ausomelian for making your OS fingerprint harder to guess.
Speaker 1: What about web server specific.
Speaker 2: Traps phphttp Tarpit it confuses web scanners using log fuzzing,
Speaker 2: filling logs with junk, and spoofing errors. You hide a
Speaker 2: reference to it in your site and when a bot
Speaker 2: hits it, it gets tangled up.
Speaker 1: And artillery that's.
Speaker 2: A listener that monitors multiple ports. If someone connects, it
Speaker 2: can play a sound and alert for you, and it
Speaker 2: can also add a firewall rule to block the IP.
Speaker 1: Moving into wireless active defense, that's a whole different playground, definitely.
Speaker 2: He tells that funny story about ATVs connecting to his
Speaker 2: you get hacked Wi Fi shows how casual wireless probing
Speaker 2: can be.
Speaker 1: Huh yeah.
Speaker 2: For more active stuff, there's Claymore. If someone joins your
Speaker 2: fake Wi Fi network, Claymore automatically runs a full end
Speaker 2: map scan against their device. Quick recon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're intel on anyone connecting to the Honeypop.
Speaker 2: WiFi right, and he mentions deauthentication tools to kick unauthorized
Speaker 2: devices off your real network. The point is you need
Speaker 2: to know who's sniffing around your wireless even if many
Speaker 2: are just looking for free Internet.
Speaker 1: Okay, lots of defensive techniques. Now attribution trying to figure
Speaker 1: out who the attackers are. Yeah, but not for revenge,
Speaker 1: she says.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not. Attribution here means understanding the attacker, What
Speaker 2: are their goals, how skilled are they, what tools are
Speaker 2: they using. It's about gathering intelligence to improve your defense.
Speaker 1: And response because static defenses just get bypassed eventually often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, attackers adapt, so attribution needs active real time effort.
Speaker 2: During an attack.
Speaker 1: He brings up ssh h like Cowori and Kippo. First,
Speaker 1: how do they help attribute?
Speaker 2: These are great because they don't just log failed logins.
Speaker 2: If an attacker does get in to the honeypot. Remember,
Speaker 2: these tools record their entire interactive shell session.
Speaker 1: You can see every command.
Speaker 2: They type, exactly what files they look for, what tools
Speaker 2: they download, what they try to run. It's incredibly valuable
Speaker 2: insight into their methods and objectives. It's like watching over
Speaker 2: their shoulder in a safe environment.
Speaker 1: What about attackers using things like tr or proxies to hide?
Speaker 1: Can active defense still work?
Speaker 2: It's harder, obviously, but Strand points out that using those
Speaker 2: tools sometimes forces attackers to disable things like JavaScript for
Speaker 2: better anonymity, which.
Speaker 1: Might break some exploits.
Speaker 2: Right, so, you can create targets requiring things like JavaScript,
Speaker 2: Java or maybe word macros. If an attacker enables those
Speaker 2: to interact with your trap, you might get more information
Speaker 2: about their browser plugins, maybe even leak their real IP.
Speaker 2: If the tech is vulnerable, you're exploiting their need to interact.
Speaker 1: He mentions dcloaks specifically for this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Deluk tries to uncover the real IP behind anonymizers,
Speaker 2: often by exploiting browser plug ins. He suggests putting it
Speaker 2: in places normal users won't go, like disallowed areas and
Speaker 2: robots dot txt, maybe with a warning.
Speaker 1: Banner like a digital trip wire for anonymized attackers. He
Speaker 1: mentions the FBI using similar.
Speaker 2: Things apparently, so yes.
Speaker 1: What about tracking breaches via files?
Speaker 2: Two main ideas here. One put fake but realistic looking
Speaker 2: bait files on servers if they get access to alarm
Speaker 2: bells ring okay to use web bugs. These are tiny,
Speaker 2: often invisible images embedded in documents or pages. When the
Speaker 2: dock is opened, it requests the image from your server,
Speaker 2: logging the opener's.
Speaker 1: IP, so you can track when and where a skull
Speaker 1: and document is opened.
Speaker 2: Potentially Yes. Tools like webbug server or slate bug server
Speaker 2: help manage this, and Deposa dot Pi specifically embeds them
Speaker 2: in modern dot docks files, which are harder to analyze
Speaker 2: for these things.
Speaker 1: Then there's honey badger sounds tacous geolocation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It uses Java applets to try and identify nearby
Speaker 2: Wi Fi access points from the attacker's machine based on
Speaker 2: public Wi Fi location databases. It can sometimes get a
Speaker 2: pretty good estimate of their physical location.
Speaker 1: Wow. And you feed that location into pushpin exactly.
Speaker 2: Pushpin is part of the reconnting framework. You give it
Speaker 2: coordinates and it scours public sources social media showdown et cetera.
Speaker 2: For information related to that geographic area.
Speaker 1: Trying to link the location to accounts.
Speaker 2: Or devices, right connecting the dots using open source intelligence,
Speaker 2: you'll need apikeys for things like Twitter.
Speaker 1: Though lastly for attribution jar combiner. This sounds of a dodgy.
Speaker 2: It definitely could be misused. The idea is to take
Speaker 2: a legitimate Java applet and embed a malicious information gathering
Speaker 2: applet inside it, so.
Speaker 1: The user sees the normal applet, but the hidden one
Speaker 1: fund's home.
Speaker 2: That's the concept. Combine the JR files, sign it to
Speaker 2: look legit. It's advanced and ethically Murky needs extreme caution.
Speaker 1: Okay, we've seen lots of tools. He then talks about frameworks,
Speaker 1: specifically tailos. What's the point of a framework here?
Speaker 2: Callos aims to make active defense more accessible and consistent.
Speaker 2: Instead of learning dozens of separate tools, you use a
Speaker 2: common interface in tailos to load and run different active
Speaker 2: defense modules, so.
Speaker 1: It standardizes things, makes it easier to train people and
Speaker 1: deploy defenses consistently.
Speaker 2: That's the idea. It has help systems, let's you set
Speaker 2: variables script things. It even has trip codes. Events from
Speaker 2: one module can trigger actions in another.
Speaker 1: Makes sense and Phantom. How does that fit with tailos.
Speaker 2: Phantom is like a remote agent for tailos. You install
Speaker 2: fandom on other machines on your network, and then your
Speaker 2: central TAILIS instance can push modules and commands out to
Speaker 2: them over ssh, where you.
Speaker 1: Can manage honeyports or other defenses on remote servers from
Speaker 1: one place.
Speaker 2: Exactly similar to how metasploit uses materpreter agents extends the
Speaker 2: reach of tailos.
Speaker 1: He also touches on some advanced concepts, even using tools
Speaker 1: like set and BEEF. Aren't those offensive tools.
Speaker 2: They are, primarily, but configure carefully they can be used
Speaker 2: for attribution. Beef, the browser exploitation framework can hook an
Speaker 2: attackers browser if they visit a compromise page.
Speaker 1: And tell you about their system.
Speaker 2: Yeah os, browser plugins, network info, maybe even deliver other payloads,
Speaker 2: but again you must place the hook carefully somewhere off limits.
Speaker 2: May be flagged in robots dot txt with warnings so
Speaker 2: legitimate users don't get hooked.
Speaker 1: Same idea for SET. Creating malicious Java applets or macros
Speaker 1: use them as bait.
Speaker 2: Right if the attacker interacts it phones home. Extreme caution
Speaker 2: and careful placement are essential. He also details using a
Speaker 2: standalone Java applet attack tool, again stressing it should only
Speaker 2: be used in restricted, clearly marked areas.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's this constant theme of balancing attack or
Speaker 1: stelp with their need to actually do something.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. His point is the more an attacker tries to
Speaker 2: hide using obfuscation, often the less effective their actual attack
Speaker 2: tools become. There's a trade off.
Speaker 1: So active defenses force them to make choices, increase.
Speaker 2: Their effort exactly. It complicates their ODI loop, makes them
Speaker 2: work harder, increases the chance they'll slip up or just
Speaker 2: give up. Raising the cost of attack is a key goal.
Speaker 1: And he wraps up by emphasizing deterrence, not revenge.
Speaker 2: Yes, very clearly, the goal isn't payback. It's making attackers
Speaker 2: think they're being watched, that they'll likely be detected. That's
Speaker 2: the deterrement.
Speaker 1: Revenge hacking is pointless and illegal.
Speaker 2: Pretty much adds no real security value and can land
Speaker 2: you in serious trouble. Remember the poison versus venom idea.
Speaker 2: You want to make attacking you unpleasant and risky for them,
Speaker 2: not necessarily strike back directly.
Speaker 1: Okay, So wrapping up this deep dive on offensive countermeasures, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the big theme seems to be a shift in thinking,
Speaker 1: moving towards more proactive, thoughtful security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not just reacting, but actively using deception, detection, and
Speaker 2: attribution as defensive tools.
Speaker 1: But always always within those legal and ethical lines that
Speaker 1: do not be evil. Message is crucial.
Speaker 2: Couldn't agree more. It underpins everything. You have to know
Speaker 2: the boundaries and stay well within them.
Speaker 1: So for you the listener, maybe think about this, How
Speaker 1: could these kinds of strategies, these less conventional defenses, change
Speaker 1: the way we approach security overall? What other ideas might
Speaker 1: come from this shift away from purely passive defense.
Speaker 2: Maybe it'll make you want to check out that original
Speaker 2: pdf by John Strand or look into some of the
Speaker 2: tools we talked about. It's definitely fascinating area.
Speaker 1: Definitely food for thought. Thanks for joining us for this
Speaker 1: deep dive.