Speaker 1: Okay, so picture this. You're looking at a book cover
Speaker 1: and it's got this incredible, uh, really vivid illustration on it.
Speaker 1: On one side, you've got a knight in full red
Speaker 1: armor wielding a massive sword that is literally on fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a very cool cut, it really is.
Speaker 1: And on the other side there's a knight in blue
Speaker 1: armor holding a sword made of solid, jagged ice. They
Speaker 1: are locked in combat. Sparks flying fire versus ice. It's
Speaker 1: like the ultimate battle scene.
Speaker 2: It's a striking image for sure, and honestly, for anyone
Speaker 2: working in cybersecurity or even just you know, watching movies
Speaker 2: about hackers, that image that red versus blue is the
Speaker 2: traditional view of how the world works. Right. You have
Speaker 2: the red team, the attackers, trying to break in, and
Speaker 2: the blue team, the defenders, trying to stop them.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's the classic wargame scenario, right.
Speaker 2: Good versus evil, attack versus defense. But today we are
Speaker 2: doing a deep dive into a source that asks a
Speaker 2: pretty radical question. What happens if those two knights stop
Speaker 2: trying to kill each other? What if instead of swinging
Speaker 2: those swords, they actually sat down, took off their helmets
Speaker 2: and started comparing notes in real time. That is the
Speaker 2: core premise of practical purple teaming by Alfie Champion. It
Speaker 2: sounds simple, almost counterintuitive, but the answer to your question
Speaker 2: is that you get something much more dangerous to the
Speaker 2: actual bad guys. Okay, you get resilience.
Speaker 1: I love that. So today we are unpacking purple teaming.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear right off the bat, because
Speaker 1: I know we have listeners from all over the industry,
Speaker 1: this isn't about hiring a new purple team to sit
Speaker 1: between the red and blue ones, right right, Like we
Speaker 1: aren't telling companies to go out and build a whole
Speaker 1: new department.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely not. And the source is very emphatic about this.
Speaker 2: Purple teaming is a methodology. It's not a separate team,
Speaker 2: got it. It's a functional shift where the offensive side,
Speaker 2: the ethical hackers, and the defensive side of the security
Speaker 2: operation center, they collaborate openly. Okay, so the goal shifts
Speaker 2: from beating the defender to collaborating with the defender to
Speaker 2: maximize cyber resilience.
Speaker 1: It sounds so logical, but you know, as we went
Speaker 1: through champions Book, it became clear that this is actually
Speaker 1: a mass of shift in mindset. It really goes against
Speaker 1: the grain of how this industry has operated for decades
Speaker 1: oh completely. So to really get why this matters, I
Speaker 1: think we have to look at the old way. When
Speaker 1: we talk about traditional red teaming. What does that dynamic
Speaker 1: usually look like?
Speaker 2: What traditional red teaming is designed to be a realistic
Speaker 2: simulation of an adversary. The red team acts like the enemy.
Speaker 2: They hide their tracks, they operate in secret, and they
Speaker 2: try to break in without being caught. And crucially, the
Speaker 2: blue team often doesn't even know the test is happening.
Speaker 1: So it's a surprise attack like a stress test precisely.
Speaker 2: And while that has value, I mean you need to
Speaker 2: know if you can be surprised, it often creates a
Speaker 2: zero sum game. Yeah, think of the psychology there. If
Speaker 2: the red team wins, if they break in and steal
Speaker 2: the CEO's password or encrypt the database, the blue team
Speaker 2: feels like they failed. It could be incredibly demoralizing. It
Speaker 2: creates this ego friction where Red thinks they are geniuses
Speaker 2: and Blue feels incompetent.
Speaker 1: Right, nobody likes being tricked, especially when it's literally your
Speaker 1: job to stop the trick. But beyond the feelings, the
Speaker 1: source highlights a major operational inefficiency here, which is the
Speaker 1: feedback loop.
Speaker 2: Right. This is the critical flaw in the traditional model.
Speaker 2: If I'm on the red team and I hack you
Speaker 2: on Monday, I usually don't tell you about it immediately.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I finished my operation. I read a report.
Speaker 2: You might not find out about the hack until I
Speaker 2: present that PDF three weeks.
Speaker 1: Later, which is just a massive document sitting on a
Speaker 1: desk that nobody wants to.
Speaker 2: Read exactly, and by then the digital evidence might be gone,
Speaker 2: the logs rotated out. The context is lost. In purple teaming,
Speaker 2: transparency is the weapon. Okay, the offensive team shares their plan.
Speaker 2: They say, I'm going to run this specific attack at
Speaker 2: this specific time, using this specific technique.
Speaker 1: I have to play Devil's advocate here. Though, that seems
Speaker 1: like cheating, doesn't it. If I tell you I'm going
Speaker 1: to punch you, it's easier to block. Are we actually
Speaker 1: testing anything? If we give the answers away?
Speaker 2: It feels like cheating if your goal is just to
Speaker 2: win the exercise. Oh but if your goal is to learn,
Speaker 2: it's a shortcut. This leads to the aha moment of
Speaker 2: purple teaming, shortening the feedback loop instead of waiting weeks
Speaker 2: for a report. The defender watches the attack happen in
Speaker 2: real time. If they miss it, they can say, hey,
Speaker 2: I didn't see that alert. Can you run it again?
Speaker 1: Run it again? That really is the magic phrase, isn't it?
Speaker 1: It changes everything it is.
Speaker 2: You can tweak your defenses on the fly, maybe ad
Speaker 2: just a firewall rule, or change a detection logic and
Speaker 2: retest immediately. Wow. That is exponentially faster than waiting for
Speaker 2: a yearly audit. You are fixing the hole while the
Speaker 2: person who found it is standing right there.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between taking a final exam and having
Speaker 1: a tutor sitting next to you explaining the answers as
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 2: Great analogy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, before we get into the how I want
Speaker 1: to distinguish this from other terms or listeners might know.
Speaker 1: We hear about vulnerability assessments and penetration tests constantly. Where
Speaker 1: does purple teaming fit in that line? Dscape?
Speaker 2: Good question, that's important to draw the lines. Think of
Speaker 2: a vulnerability assessment like walking around a building checking for
Speaker 2: unlocked doors. It's usually automated scanning for unpatched software. It's
Speaker 2: broad covering everything, but it's very shallow. It just tells
Speaker 2: you the door is unlocked, not what is inside, got it?
Speaker 1: And a penetration test.
Speaker 2: A pin test is usually focused on finding flaws and
Speaker 2: one specific thing, like a new web app or a
Speaker 2: specific server. It's deeper, but it's still often about can
Speaker 2: we get in. It stops once they prove they can
Speaker 2: break the lock.
Speaker 1: And the source mentions assumed breach testing.
Speaker 2: That sounds ominous, Yes, assumed breach is where you skip
Speaker 2: the hard part of getting in. You assume someone clicked
Speaker 2: a phishing email or a laptop was stolen. You start
Speaker 2: the test from the inside. That is often where purple
Speaker 2: teaming shines because you can focus entirely on detecting movement
Speaker 2: inside the network, which is where the real damage happens.
Speaker 1: Because realistically, eventually someone is going to click the line.
Speaker 2: Someone always clicks the line, So purple teaming asks, once
Speaker 2: they are inside, can we catch them before they steal
Speaker 2: the crown jewels?
Speaker 1: Right? So we know how they work together conceptually, but practically,
Speaker 1: if you put a hacker and a corporate security officer
Speaker 1: in a room, they might be speaking different dialects entirely.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: The hacker is talking about exploits and shell code, the
Speaker 1: defenders talking about compliance and tickets. The source material spends
Speaker 1: a lot of time on frameworks to bridge this.
Speaker 2: Gap it does without a common language, this collaboration falls
Speaker 2: apart and the absolute standard, the Rosetta stone for this
Speaker 2: is itri Att and.
Speaker 1: Ck Periodic Table for hackers.
Speaker 2: It really is itr Att and Ck catalogs known adversary
Speaker 2: behaviors based on real world observations gives us a matrix
Speaker 2: across the top. You have tactics. These are the adversaries
Speaker 2: high level goals.
Speaker 1: So the tactic is the what are they try and do,
Speaker 1: like I want to skal data or I want to
Speaker 1: shut down the system.
Speaker 2: Correct tactic equals goal things like initial access, execution or exfiltration.
Speaker 2: And underneath each tactic are the techniques the how okay,
Speaker 2: the goal is initial access, the technique might be phishing
Speaker 2: or exploiting a public facing application.
Speaker 1: And then it drills down even further right.
Speaker 2: Yes, down to procedures, which are the specific tools or
Speaker 2: steps used. So we have PTPs, tactics, techniques and procedures.
Speaker 1: Why is the structure so vital for purple teaming, specifically.
Speaker 2: Because it removes ambiguity instead of the red team saying
Speaker 2: we did some hacking stuff and got your passwords. They
Speaker 2: can say we executed technique T one O five nine
Speaker 2: command and scripting interpreter using PowerShell.
Speaker 1: That's way more specific.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The Blue team can then look up T one
Speaker 2: O five to nine in their own database. It aligns
Speaker 2: the attack with the defense. It turns magic into a
Speaker 2: catalog number.
Speaker 1: And connected to This is my absolute favorite concept from
Speaker 1: the book. It's a visual that explains why we do
Speaker 1: all this work. The Pyramid of pain.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a wrestling move, it really does.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Pyramid of Pain, but it's actually about
Speaker 1: how much you can annoy a hacker.
Speaker 2: Right. It represents the difficulty we inflict on an attacker
Speaker 2: when we block them. Visualize a pyramid. At the wide bottom.
Speaker 2: You have things that are trivial for an attacker to change,
Speaker 2: things like hash values and IP addresses.
Speaker 1: Right, So if I block an attacker's IQ address, I
Speaker 1: might feel good about myself. I stop them, But what
Speaker 1: does that actually do to them?
Speaker 2: To them, almost nothing. They just route their traffic through
Speaker 2: a different server, takes them seconds. It causes them zero pain.
Speaker 2: It's like change in a burner phone.
Speaker 1: So we're basically playing whack a mole at the bottom of.
Speaker 2: The pyramid, exactly moving up the pyramid, you have domain names,
Speaker 2: then network and host artifacts, things like specific file names
Speaker 2: or user agent strings. These are a bit harder to change,
Speaker 2: but still manageable for a sophisticated attacker.
Speaker 1: But then we get to the top, the point to
Speaker 1: end the pain zone.
Speaker 2: Tools and TTPs. If you can detect and block the
Speaker 2: tools they use, they have to go find or build
Speaker 2: new software. That is expensive, that takes time. But if
Speaker 2: you can detect the TTP, the behavior itself, that is
Speaker 2: the pinnacle.
Speaker 1: Can you give me an example of a TTP versus
Speaker 1: a tool, because I want to make sure I really
Speaker 1: get this.
Speaker 2: Okay, Let's say the TTP is credential dumping. The attacker
Speaker 2: wants to steal login information from the computer's memory. There
Speaker 2: are fifty different tools to do this. Mimicats is a
Speaker 2: famous one. If you block mimicats, the tool the attacker
Speaker 2: just uses a different script. But if you detect the
Speaker 2: behavior of a program trying to touch the memory of
Speaker 2: the security subsystem.
Speaker 1: Then it doesn't matter what tool they use exactly.
Speaker 2: You've blocked the technique. To get around that, the attacker
Speaker 2: has to invent a completely new way of stealing credentials.
Speaker 2: You're forcing them to relearn their tradecraft. You're making their
Speaker 2: job incredibly.
Speaker 1: Difficult, and that is the goal of purple teaming. We
Speaker 1: want to live at the top of the pyramid of pain.
Speaker 1: We want to make their lives miserable.
Speaker 2: We do. We want to make the cost of hacking
Speaker 2: us higher than the value of what they're trying to steal.
Speaker 1: So we have the language mitre and the goal the pyramid.
Speaker 1: Now let's get into mechanics. The source outlines two main
Speaker 1: methodologies for actually running these exercises, scenario based and atomic on.
Speaker 2: Very different they are, and they serve different purposes. Think
Speaker 2: of scenario based purple teaming like a movie plot. It
Speaker 2: follows a narrative arc. We call this an activity thread.
Speaker 1: Okay, set the scene for me. What is the plot?
Speaker 2: Action? A user clicks a phishing email in hr malware executes,
Speaker 2: the attacker performs reconnaissance to see where they are. Then
Speaker 2: they move latterly to a finance server. Finally they exfiltrate
Speaker 2: sensitive data. It connects the dots across the entire kill
Speaker 2: chain from start to finish.
Speaker 1: Show It test the whole story.
Speaker 2: It tests the people and the processes. This is crucial.
Speaker 2: Can the security operation center handle the volume of alerts?
Speaker 2: Do they panic when they see the attacker moving laterally?
Speaker 2: Do they know who to call? Do they escalate to
Speaker 2: the right manager.
Speaker 1: It's a fire drill, it is, but as.
Speaker 2: You can imagine, it's pretty heavy to set up. You
Speaker 2: need a script. You need the red team acting continuously,
Speaker 2: you need the Blue team monitoring. It's a production. It
Speaker 2: takes time and resources. You can't do that every day.
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the second method, which seems much
Speaker 1: more agile, Atomic purple teaming.
Speaker 2: Atomic is like the science lab. You isolate one specific variable.
Speaker 2: Champion calls this de chaining. You take a single link
Speaker 2: out of that kill chain, sage just credential dumping, and
Speaker 2: you test it in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: So no story mode, just the mechanics.
Speaker 2: Right. You run the attack, see if you catch it,
Speaker 2: fix the rule, and run it again.
Speaker 1: This seems perfect for what the book calls performance benchmarking.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's fast, repeatable, and very easy to automate. You
Speaker 2: can run an atomic test for process injection every Tuesday
Speaker 2: morning if you want, just to make sure your sensors
Speaker 2: are still working.
Speaker 1: Wow, Every Tuesday Yeah.
Speaker 2: It answers the question did we get better at spotting
Speaker 2: this specific bad thing since last month?
Speaker 1: Let's make this real for the listener. The book has
Speaker 1: this great example about a very specific problem finding out
Speaker 1: who the administrators.
Speaker 2: Are the discovery tactic.
Speaker 1: Right, So I'm an attacker, I have landed inside the network.
Speaker 1: I want to know who holds the keys to the kingdom.
Speaker 1: I want to find the domain admin's groups so I
Speaker 1: can target them. How many ways can I ask that question?
Speaker 2: This is where the atomic methodology really shines because it
Speaker 2: exposes the gaps. The book lays out a test suite. First,
Speaker 2: there's the classic way. You're on a Windows machine. You
Speaker 2: open the command prompt and you type net group, domain admins.
Speaker 1: Simple, old school.
Speaker 2: Very old school. Most security tools will catch that instantly.
Speaker 2: It's loud and obvious. But then method two you use
Speaker 2: a PowerShell script to query active directory, same question, different languages, okay.
Speaker 2: Method three use a specific hacker tool, something like adfind.
Speaker 2: This is tricky because adfind is a legitimate tool often
Speaker 2: used by sitzidmins to manage the network, but it's beloved
Speaker 2: it by attackers because it blends.
Speaker 1: In so it looks like normal traffic.
Speaker 2: And method four self using living off land binaries or
Speaker 2: executing code directly in memory, so nothing touches the hard drive.
Speaker 1: So here is the million dollar question. If I am
Speaker 1: the blue team and I write a detection role that
Speaker 1: says alert me, if anyone types net group domain admins,
Speaker 1: am I safe?
Speaker 2: You are saved from the lazy attacker who uses method one.
Speaker 2: You're completely blind to methods two, three, and four. And
Speaker 2: that is a terrifying realization for many organizations. They think
Speaker 2: they are covered because they've blocked the first thing they
Speaker 2: thought of.
Speaker 1: And this leads to a concept. The expert in the
Speaker 1: book and really the industry emphasizes capability abstraction. This is
Speaker 1: a bit technical, but I think it's the most important
Speaker 1: takeaway of the deep dive. Can you break that down?
Speaker 2: Yes, capability abstraction is the antidote to the whack a
Speaker 2: mole problem. We just listed four different ways to find
Speaker 2: the admin's net dot ex, a PowerShell adfind in memory execution.
Speaker 2: To a human, these look like four different tools, right.
Speaker 1: One is a command, one is a script, one is
Speaker 1: a program.
Speaker 2: But to the computer, to the network controller, they are
Speaker 2: all doing the same underlying thing. They're asking the domain
Speaker 2: controller for a list of users. They're likely using the
Speaker 2: same protocol like ld app or a sam.
Speaker 1: So capability abstraction means looking at what is happening under
Speaker 1: the hood, not just the shiny paint.
Speaker 2: On top exactly. If you can detect the ld app
Speaker 2: query that requests the domain admin list, you catch all
Speaker 2: four methods with one rule.
Speaker 1: Wait, really, one rule catches all of them, yes.
Speaker 2: Because they all have to ask the question. If you
Speaker 2: detect the question being asked, you don't care if they
Speaker 2: use a megaphone, a whipper, or a handwritten note. You
Speaker 2: caught the intent. That is the power of purple teaming.
Speaker 2: It stops you from chasing tools and helps you detect
Speaker 2: the underlying behavior.
Speaker 1: That is a light bulb moment. Stop chasing a tool,
Speaker 1: chase the behavior. It seems so obvious once you say it,
Speaker 1: but getting there requires that deep technical collaboration precisely.
Speaker 2: And you only get there if the red team, who
Speaker 2: knows the tools talks to the blue team, who knows
Speaker 2: the logs.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we are running these tests, we're firing off
Speaker 1: LDPP queries, we're checking logs, but we have to talk
Speaker 1: about the humans in the room, the logistics and human
Speaker 1: element section of the source material was surprisingly focused on
Speaker 1: just sitting together.
Speaker 2: Communication is critical. If you are doing your Purple Team
Speaker 2: extra you shouldn't be emailing each other. You should be
Speaker 2: in the same room or at least on a dedicated
Speaker 2: video call or slack channel.
Speaker 1: Shoulder surfing is the term they used.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's literal. The Blue team members should literally be
Speaker 2: looking over the shoulder of the Red team member as
Speaker 2: they type the command A enter now, and then the
Speaker 2: Red team members should walk over and look at the
Speaker 2: Blue team's screen to see what the logs look like.
Speaker 1: That transparency level is interesting. Do you tell the Blue
Speaker 1: team exactly what is coming, like, Hey, I'm about to
Speaker 1: run this specific malware at two point zero five pm?
Speaker 2: Usually yes, full transparency is better for learning. If you
Speaker 2: want to test surprise, do a Red team engagement. If
Speaker 2: you want to test detection logic, tell them exactly what
Speaker 2: you are doing.
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
Speaker 2: You don't want the Blue team wasting three hours wondering
Speaker 2: if an alert is a false alarm. You want them
Speaker 2: digging into the data immediately to see why it fired
Speaker 2: or why it didn't.
Speaker 1: And you have to write this down. You can't just say, oh,
Speaker 1: it worked.
Speaker 2: Data is everything you need to track success. The book
Speaker 2: mentions tools like v ectr, which is designed for this
Speaker 2: and visualizes the results, but honestly, a simple jar at
Speaker 2: ticket or a shared Excel sheet works too. You need
Speaker 2: to record the outcome and.
Speaker 1: The metrics aren't just pass fail, are they.
Speaker 2: No, it's nuanced. Did we block it, that's a win.
Speaker 2: Did we detect it but not block it, that's okay.
Speaker 2: At least the alarm rang. But maybe we can do better.
Speaker 2: Or was it silent?
Speaker 1: That silent categories the stuff of nightmares.
Speaker 2: It is did the attack happen and we saw absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: no logs, no alerts, silence. That is the danger zone.
Speaker 2: That means you are bleeding and you don't know it.
Speaker 1: But finding those silent gaps is the whole point of
Speaker 1: the exercise.
Speaker 2: It is you'd rather find the silence now with your
Speaker 2: colleague then later with a real attacker. And this brings
Speaker 2: us back to that cultural shift we started with. We
Speaker 2: have to move away from the ego battles, right.
Speaker 1: The I gotcha moments, the gotcha culture Exactly.
Speaker 2: The goal isn't for the red team to win. The
Speaker 2: goal is for the blue team to get better. If
Speaker 2: the red team breaks in, steals the data, and nobody
Speaker 2: learns anything because they're too busy arguing or hiding the
Speaker 2: fail The exercise was a total waste of money.
Speaker 1: It's about leaving the ego at the door, you know.
Speaker 1: Looking at all of this, the frameworks, the atomic tests,
Speaker 1: the collaboration, it really feels like the industry growing up.
Speaker 1: It's moving from night swinging swords to scientists in the
Speaker 1: lab improving the immune system of the company.
Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy. It's moving from combat to engineering.
Speaker 2: We are engineering resilience.
Speaker 1: So to recap our deep dive Today. Purple teeming isn't
Speaker 1: a new department. It's a new way of collaborating. It's
Speaker 1: using frameworks like year ATT and c K to speak
Speaker 1: the same language. It's aiming for the top of the
Speaker 1: pyramid of pain to block behaviors, not just tools. And
Speaker 1: it's using atomic tests to validate your defenses continuously.
Speaker 2: And doing it continuously is key, not once a year,
Speaker 2: but treating it as a constant cycle of improvement, because
Speaker 2: the attackers aren't taking days off.
Speaker 1: Now. Before we let you go, there was one thought
Speaker 1: in the source material that really stuck with me. It
Speaker 1: was about the adversaries themselves. We often think of hackers
Speaker 1: as these omnipotent wizards who can do anything.
Speaker 2: Ah. Yes, the mention of groups like the Lazarus group right.
Speaker 1: The point was that even the sophisticated attackers, state sponsored
Speaker 1: groups with millions of dollars, they change their tools constantly.
Speaker 1: They might compile a new piece of malware every morning.
Speaker 2: Their habits often remain the same. They have muscle memory,
Speaker 2: just like we do. They prefer certain ways of moving laterally.
Speaker 2: They have favorite commands for discovery. They are human.
Speaker 1: They like what they know, and that is the challenge
Speaker 1: we want to leave you with today. If you looked
Speaker 1: at your organization's security right now, are you blocking IP
Speaker 1: addresses the stuff that changes every day and causes low
Speaker 1: pain for the attacker? Or are you hunting for habits?
Speaker 2: Are you hunting for the behavior that forces the adversary
Speaker 2: to rethink their entire strategy. That is where you want
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 1: That's the Purple Team mindset. Stay curious, everyone, and keep
Speaker 1: connecting the dots.
Speaker 2: Goodbye,