VB2020 presentation & paper: Advanced Pasta Threat: mapping threat actor usage of open-source offensive security tools

The development and publication of offensive security tools (OSTs) is a point of great controversy in the information security community: while some argue that releasing such tools publicly is irresponsible, offering adversaries the opportunity to outsource the development of tools and techniques, the opposing argument supports the publication of such tools as a valuable resource for new researchers, and as an aid for defenders in mitigating newly discovered techniques and probing their own defences.

A piece of research carried out by

Intezer,

designed to illustrate the extent of the influence of offensive security tools on adversary operations, gave researcher Paul Litvak the opportunity to compile a comprehensive map of threat actor use of open-source OSTs.

At VB2020 localhost, Paul presented his OST map for the first time, detailing the steps undertaken to build it, explaining the importance of bringing this information together, and some of the discoveries he made along the way.

The OST map is available at

http://intezer.com/ost-map

.

Paul’s VB2020 paper can be downloaded

here

(PDF).

If you missed VB2020 localhost don’t worry, the content is still available to view at

.