Lose Yourself in the DFIR Music
Sunday, March 9, 2014
To seize everything you ever wanted. One moment
Would you capture it or just let it slip?"
~ Eminem
Everybody has a story. Everybody has a reason about why they ended up in the Digital Forensic and Incident Response (DFIR) field. Sharing these experiences is beneficial to those looking to follow in your footsteps; students fresh out of college, career changers, or people looking to do something different in DFIR. In this post I'm sharing my story, my story about how I became an incident responder. A path that has been very challenging while rewarding at the same time. A path that started with the mindset seen in the "Lose Yourself" lyrics below.
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
The opportunity comes once in a lifetime"
Formulate Your Plot
At the time I was working in a security unit doing network penetration testing and digital forensics support for investigations. How I ended up in this unit in the first place was due to the same mindset I'm about to describe. I enjoyed the offensive side of the house but I knew it wasn't my passion. Digital forensics was at one point challenging but it became very repetitive mostly working fraud investigations. I wanted something more. I wanted something where you are constantly challenged; I wanted to do incident response. I set my sights on incident response being the end goal and knew everything I would do was to help me reach that goal. I didn't know where this path would lead but I thought about my preferences which were in this order: incident responder in my own organization, incident responder with a specific organization in the NYS public sector, or joining an established rock solid IR team.
Focus on the Process
In DFIR and information security in general, people have a tendency to focus on the tools one should use. The better approach and the one I take is to initially focus on the process one uses to leverage tools to accomplish something. Within incident response there are numerous processes that are dictated by an incident's classification. To make it more manageable as I started my journey into incident response I focused on one specific incident type (malicious code incidents). I set out to learn everything about what examination steps one uses to investigate a machine compromised with malicious code, what artifacts to parse, and the tools one uses.
My plan wasn't to only be skilled at malicious code incidents since my focus was on the larger incident response field. In addition to learning the technical skills and knowledge, I spent considerable time better understanding the larger incident response process. How the process should work, how to design the process, how to build and manage a CSIRT, and how to manage incidents. I even focused on incident response while I was going for my Masters of Science in Information Assurance. I took the incident response management track as well as made this my focus on assignments where we had flexibility with choosing our own topics.
Focus on the Skill Set
Learning the processes is only the first step; my next step was to develop my skill set carrying out those processes. I spent considerable time practicing the malicious code investigation process by compromising test systems followed by examining them. In a future post I'll share how I did this so others can follow suit. I did this for months. In the beginning it was to learn the process then it was to be more efficient then it was to be faster.
As I was working towards my goal I kept my eyes open for the opportunities that come once in a lifetime. I knew I wasn't ready to approach my organization about doing IR work since I had to own it when I did. However, other opportunities presented themselves when family members and friends reached out to me as their "IT support guy" because their systems were infected. This opportunity allowed me to continue building my skill set while helping others. In addition to practicing on test systems, I began making it known to family and friends that I will fix their infected computers for free.
Search for the Opportunity
Opportunities have a tendency to just appear but sometimes you have to seek them out. At the time I was well prepared with my knowledge and skill set in incident response so I was confident I could own certain opportunities if I found them. I started to pursue my first preference for doing IR work, which was for my current organization. I didn't ask them to send me to training or to let me help them with their incident response process. Instead I wanted them to see the value in what IR can do for an organization besides putting out fires but I had to do it in a way to compliment my skills.
I got the word out to the other security units that I could assist them with any infected systems. I made two things clear. First, I would tell them what the root cause was so they can start to mitigate infections by strengthen their controls. I knew root cause analysis wasn't consistently being done and for the security units to have access to this new skill set was instant value for them. My second point was a calculated risk but I made it clear I would be faster than their current process as well as the IT shops who re-image infected systems. If I was going to be doing the work it had to be faster than their current processes. If it wasn't then why should they even bother with me. I knew being faster would add value to the organization by freeing up FTEs (full time employees) to do other work.
I occasionally kept putting out reminders to the security units about my offer as well as getting my supervisor to remain on board for me to do this work. I can't remember how long this selling went on for (maybe a month or two) but my opportunity finally presented itself. There was an infected machine and they wanted to know the root cause. This was my shot and I knew there were two outcomes. If I came back with nothing or if my response was I can't do this work without training then they probably wouldn't had come back to me for help again. If I nailed it and showed them the value in root cause analysis for minor malicious code events then maybe I would do this work more frequently. Needless to say, the preparation I did on my own enabled me to nail the examination and I came through on the two points I sold to them to get their buy-in. Nailing the first examination wasn't enough because I had to own this and lose myself in the DFIR music.
Own the Opportunity
I and my organization had a taste of using the IR skill set for security events that were not considered to be incidents. Now I had to own this opportunity. I continued working to improve my skill set through compromising test systems and helping anyone who asked. I continued buying and reading DFIR books as well as blogs, papers, articles, etc.. I continued to hone my process to make it faster. I sacrificed my free personal time to live and breathe DFIR. The request for malicious code assistances kept coming in and each time I was better than the last. I kept getting faster and I kept showing my organization more value in what IR can do.
As I said, opportunities have a tendency to present themselves. After some time building up this working relationship there was a priority security incident. A highly visible website was potentially compromised and a determination about what happened had to be done as soon as possible. The case was mine if I wanted it and I knew I was prepared due to the months I lost myself in the DFIR music. This opportunity was different and had more at stake. My organization leveraged a third party IR service for priority incidents. In this incident, my organization used this service in addition to my assistance. To make the stakes even higher, initially we (myself and the third party) were not allowed to communicate with each other. This was an opportunity for me to not only reassure myself my place in the IR field but for me to own my place in my organization's incident response process. I worked the case with my co-worker (who was a network penetration tester with zero DFIR experience) and we were able to come back with answers before the third party service. In the end, the server wasn't compromised and everyone can stand down.
I continued losing myself in the DFIR music and owned each new opportunity that presented itself. This journey has lead to where I am today. I'm building out my organization's enterprise-wide incident response capability, developing our CSIRT, and improving our response capability by making it faster. I'm improving our detection capability by architecturing and managing our SIEM deployment as well as combining our detection and response capabilities.
Lose Yourself in the DFIR Music
The path that lead me to become an incident responder has been very challenging but rewarding. It required sacrifices and a lot of work to be prepared for the opportunities that God put in my path. It requires constant motivation so I will be better tomorrow than I am today. It requires me to approach my career as if each opportunity may be the last. It requires me to have the mindset seen in the "Lose Yourself" lyrics.
"You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
The opportunity comes once in a lifetime"
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Did you do any certs on your own? and did you get a degree? Thanks for the insight
I think its beneficial to have a mixture of formal education and certification to go with your experience. On my own, I worked to get the EnCE (Encase Certified Examiner), CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker), and my MS in IA to go with my BS in Telecommunications.
Excellent write up, thanks for sharing your experiences. I am looking to get into the ir field myself and have learned so much just from reading your blog.
I can't say that I've been able to use these skills in my job as much as I would like to, but enjoy practicing on my own. I look forward to your upcoming post on how to infect your own systems for additional ir practice.
I guess I could just click on the links from all my spam emails to get infected, but curious your methods for accomplishing this.