Active Defense and Cyber Deception with John Strand

In this class, you will learn how to force an attacker to take more moves to attack your network.

Active Defenses have been capturing a large amount of attention in the media lately. There are those who thirst for vengeance and want to directly attack the attackers. There are those who believe that any sort of active response directed at an attacker is wrong. We believe the answer is somewhere in between.

These moves may increase your ability to detect them. You will learn how to gain better attribution as to who is attacking you and why. You will also find out how to get access to a bad guy’s system. And most importantly, you will find out how to do the above legally.

The current threat landscape is shifting. Traditional defenses are failing us. We need to develop new strategies to defend ourselves. Even more importantly, we need to better understand who is attacking us and why. Some of the things we talk about you may implement immediately, others may take you a while to implement. Either way, consider what we discuss as a collection of tools at your disposal when you need them to annoy attackers, attribute who is attacking you, and finally, attack the attackers.

This class is based on the DARPA funded Active Defense Harbinger Distribution live Linux environment. This VM is built from the ground up for defenders to quickly implement Active Defenses in their environments. This class is also very heavy with hands-on labs. We will not just talk about Active Defenses. We will be doing hands-on labs and through them in a way that can be quickly and easily implemented in your environment.