Cloud Forensics Demystified

Cloud Forensics Demystified

by Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee
Released February 2024
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781800564411

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Book description

Enhance your skills as a cloud investigator to adeptly respond to cloud incidents by combining traditional forensic techniques with innovative approaches

Key Features

  • Uncover the steps involved in cloud forensic investigations for M365 and Google Workspace
  • Explore tools and logs available within AWS, Azure, and Google for cloud investigations
  • Learn how to investigate containerized services such as Kubernetes and Docker
  • Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook

Book Description

As organizations embrace cloud-centric environments, it becomes imperative for security professionals to master the skills of effective cloud investigation. Cloud Forensics Demystified addresses this pressing need, explaining how to use cloud-native tools and logs together with traditional digital forensic techniques for a thorough cloud investigation.

The book begins by giving you an overview of cloud services, followed by a detailed exploration of the tools and techniques used to investigate popular cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Progressing through the chapters, you’ll learn how to investigate Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and containerized environments such as Kubernetes. Throughout, the chapters emphasize the significance of the cloud, explaining which tools and logs need to be enabled for investigative purposes and demonstrating how to integrate them with traditional digital forensic tools and techniques to respond to cloud security incidents.

By the end of this book, you’ll be well-equipped to handle security breaches in cloud-based environments and have a comprehensive understanding of the essential cloud-based logs vital to your investigations. This knowledge will enable you to swiftly acquire and scrutinize artifacts of interest in cloud security incidents.

What you will learn

  • Explore the essential tools and logs for your cloud investigation
  • Master the overall incident response process and approach
  • Familiarize yourself with the MITRE ATT&CK framework for the cloud
  • Get to grips with live forensic analysis and threat hunting in the cloud
  • Learn about cloud evidence acquisition for offline analysis
  • Analyze compromised Kubernetes containers
  • Employ automated tools to collect logs from M365

Who this book is for

This book is for cybersecurity professionals, incident responders, and IT professionals adapting to the paradigm shift toward cloud-centric environments. Anyone seeking a comprehensive guide to investigating security incidents in popular cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and GCP, as well as Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and containerized environments like Kubernetes will find this book useful. Whether you're a seasoned professional or a newcomer to cloud security, this book offers insights and practical knowledge to enable you to handle and secure cloud-based infrastructure.

Table of contents

  1. Cloud Forensics Demystified
  2. Contributors
  3. About the authors
  4. About the reviewers
  5. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
    4. Conventions used
    5. Get in touch
    6. Share Your Thoughts
    7. Download a free PDF copy of this book
  6. Part 1: Cloud Fundamentals
  7. Chapter 1: Introduction to the Cloud
    1. Advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing
    2. An overview of cloud services
    3. Cloud deployment models
    4. Cloud adoption success stories
    5. Impact of the cloud and other technologies
    6. Summary
    7. Further reading
  8. Chapter 2: Trends in Cyber and Privacy Laws and Their Impact on DFIR
    1. The role of a breach counselor (breach coach)
    2. General legal considerations for cloud adoption
    3. eDiscovery considerations and legal guidance
    4. Digital forensics challenges
    5. Legal frameworks for private data
      1. Contractual private data
      2. Regulated private data
      3. Jurisdictional requirements in relation to private data
    6. Legal implications for data retention and deletion
    7. Responsibilities and liabilities of the cloud and their implications for incident response
    8. Jurisdiction and cross-border data transfers
    9. Summary
    10. Further reading
  9. Chapter 3: Exploring the Major Cloud Providers
    1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
      1. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
      2. Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
      3. Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)
      4. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
      5. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
    2. Microsoft Azure
      1. Microsoft Azure virtual machines
      2. Microsoft Azure Virtual Network
      3. Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
      4. Microsoft Azure Active Directory (Azure AD)
      5. Microsoft Azure SQL Database
    3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
      1. Google Compute Engine (GCE)
      2. Google Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
      3. Google Cloud Storage (GCS)
      4. Google Cloud SQL
    4. Other cloud service providers
    5. Summary
    6. Further reading
  10. Chapter 4: DFIR Investigations – Logs in AWS
    1. VPC flow logs
      1. VPC basics
      2. Sample VPC flow log
      3. DFIR use cases for VPC flow logging
    2. S3 access logs
      1. Logging options
      2. DFIR use cases for S3 monitoring
    3. AWS CloudTrail
      1. Creating a trail
      2. Event data stores
      3. Investigating CloudTrail events
      4. DFIR use cases for CloudTrail logging
    4. AWS CloudWatch
      1. CloudWatch versus CloudTrail
      2. Setting up CloudWatch logging
      3. Querying CloudWatch logs on the AWS console
      4. DFIR use cases for CloudWatch
    5. Amazon GuardDuty
    6. Amazon Detective
    7. Summary
    8. Further reading
  11. Part 2: Forensic Readiness: Tools, Techniques, and Preparation for Cloud Forensics
  12. Chapter 5: DFIR Investigations – Logs in Azure
    1. Azure Log Analytics
    2. Azure Virtual Networks
      1. NSG flow logs
      2. Azure Storage
      3. Azure Monitor
    3. Azure Virtual Machines log analysis
      1. Microsoft Defender for Cloud
      2. NSG flow logs
    4. Microsoft Sentinel
    5. Summary
    6. Further reading
  13. Chapter 6: DFIR Investigations – Logs in GCP
    1. GCP core services
    2. GCP IAM
      1. GCP’s IAM roles and identities
    3. Policy Analyzer
      1. DFIR use cases for Policy Analyzer
    4. GCP Logs Explorer
      1. Overview of log buckets
      2. DFIR use cases for using Logs Explorer
      3. Familiarizing with Logs Explorer
    5. VPC Flow Logs
      1. Enabling VPC Flow Logs
      2. Hunting VPC Flow Logs for malicious activities
    6. Packet Mirroring
    7. Compute Engine logs
      1. GCP’s logging platform
      2. GCP’s default logging
    8. Logging Dataflow pipelines
    9. GCP storage logs
      1. Storage permissions
      2. Storage object logging
      3. Investigating GCP Cloud storage logs
    10. Cloud Security Command Center (Cloud SCC)
      1. IAM roles
      2. Threats and Findings dashboards
    11. GCP Cloud Shell
    12. Summary
    13. Further reading
  14. Chapter 7: Cloud Productivity Suites
    1. Overview of Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace core services
      1. Microsoft 365
      2. Google Workspace
    2. IAM in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
      1. Microsoft 365
      2. Google Workspace
    3. Auditing and compliance features in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
      1. Microsoft 365’s Security and Compliance Center (Microsoft Purview)
    4. Google Workspace Admin console and security features
    5. Summary
    6. Further reading
  15. Part 3: Cloud Forensic Analysis – Responding to an Incident in the Cloud
  16. Chapter 8: The Digital Forensics and Incident Response Process
    1. The basics of the incident response process
    2. Tools and techniques for digital forensic investigations
      1. Prerequisites
      2. Cloud host forensics
      3. Memory forensics
    3. Live forensic analysis and threat hunting
      1. EDR-based threat hunting
      2. Hunting for malware
      3. Common persistence mechanisms
    4. Network forensics
      1. Basic networking concepts
      2. Cloud network forensics – log sources and tools
      3. Network investigation tools
    5. Malware investigations
      1. Setting up your malware analysis lab
      2. Working with packed malware
      3. Binary comparison
    6. Traditional forensics versus cloud forensics
    7. Summary
    8. Further reading
  17. Chapter 9: Common Attack Vectors and TTPs
    1. MITRE ATT&CK framework
    2. Forensic triage collections
    3. Host-based forensics
      1. Evidence of intrusion
      2. Prefetch analysis
      3. AmCache analysis
      4. ShimCache analysis
      5. Windows Event Logs
      6. Analyzing memory dumps
    4. Misconfigured virtual machine instances
      1. Unnecessary ports left open
      2. Default credentials left unchanged
      3. Outdated or unpatched software
      4. Publicly exposed sensitive data (or metadata)
    5. Misconfigured storage buckets
      1. Public permissions
      2. Exposed API keys or credentials
      3. Improper use of IAM policies
    6. Cloud administrator portal breach
    7. Summary
    8. Further reading
  18. Chapter 10: Cloud Evidence Acquisition
    1. Forensic acquisition of AWS instance
      1. Step 1 – creating EC2 volume snapshots
      2. Step 2 – acquiring OS memory images
      3. Step 3 – creating a forensic collector instance
      4. Step 4 – creating and attaching infected volume from snapshots
      5. Step 5 – exporting collected images to AWS S3 for offline processing
    2. Forensic acquisition of Microsoft Azure Instances
      1. Step 1 – creating an Azure VM Snapshot
      2. Step 2 – exporting an Azure VM snapshot directly
      3. Step 3 – connecting to an Azure VM for memory imaging
    3. Forensic acquisition of GCP instances
      1. Step 1 – creating a snapshot of the compute engine instance
      2. Step 2 – attaching a snapshot disk for forensic acquisition
      3. Step 3 – connecting to the GCP compute engine instance for memory acquisition
    4. Summary
    5. Further reading
  19. Chapter 11: Analyzing Compromised Containers
    1. What are containers?
      1. Docker versus Kubernetes
      2. Types of containers and their use cases
    2. Detecting and analyzing compromised containers
      1. About the Kubernetes orchestration platform
      2. Acquiring forensic data and container logs for analysis
    3. Summary
    4. Further reading
  20. Chapter 12: Analyzing Compromised Cloud Productivity Suites
    1. Business email compromise explained
      1. BEC attack phases
      2. Common types of BECs
    2. Initial scoping and response
      1. Remediation steps
    3. Microsoft 365 incident response
      1. Tooling
      2. Analysis
    4. Google Workspace incident response
      1. Tooling
      2. Analysis
    5. Summary
    6. Further reading
  21. Index
    1. Why subscribe?
  22. Other Books You May Enjoy
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    2. Share Your Thoughts
    3. Download a free PDF copy of this book

Product information

  • Title: Cloud Forensics Demystified
  • Author(s): Ganesh Ramakrishnan, Mansoor Haqanee
  • Release date: February 2024
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781800564411