1. Introduction
The Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis was developed by cybersecurity professionals - Sergio Caltagirone, Andrew Pendergast, and Christopher Betz in 2013.
As described by its creators, the Diamond Model is composed of four core features: adversary, infrastructure, capability, and victim, and establishes the fundamental atomic element of any intrusion activity. You might have also noticed two additional components or axes of the Diamond Model - Social, Political and Technology; we will go into a little bit more detail about them later in this room. Why is it called a "Diamond Model"? The four core features are edge-connected, representing their underlying relationships and arranged in the shape of a diamond.
The Diamond Model carries the essential concepts of intrusion analysis and adversary operations while allowing the flexibility to expand and encompass new ideas and concepts. The model provides various opportunities to integrate intelligence in real-time for network defence, automating correlation across events, classifying events with confidence into adversary campaigns, and forecasting adversary operations while planning and gaming mitigation strategies.
Why should you learn about The Diamond Model?
The Diamond Model can help you identify the elements of an intrusion. At the end of this room, you will create a Diamond Model for events such as a breach, intrusion, attack, or incident. You will also be able to analyze an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT).
The Diamond Model can also help explain to other people who are non-technical about what happened during an event or any valuable information on the malicious threat actor.
2. Adversary
An adversary is also known as an attacker, enemy, cyber threat actor, or hacker. The adversary is the person who stands behind the cyberattack. Cyberattacks can be an instruction or a breach.
Adversary Operator is the "hacker" or person(s) conducting the intrusion activity.
Adversary Customer is the entity that stands to benefit from the activity conducted in the intrusion. It may be the same person who stands behind the adversary operator, or it may be a separate person or group.
As an example, an adversary customer could control different operators simultaneously. Each operator might have its capabilities and infrastructure.
3. Victim
Victim -- is a target of the adversary. A victim can be an organization, person, target email address, IP address, domain, etc. It's essential to understand the difference between the victim persona and the victim assets because they serve different analytic functions.
Victim Personae are the people and organizations being targeted and whose assets are being attacked and exploited. These can be organization names, people's names, industries, job roles, interests, etc.
Victim Assets are the attack surface and include the set of systems, networks, email addresses, hosts, IP addresses, social networking accounts, etc., to which the adversary will direct their capabilities.
4. Capability
Capability -- is also known as the skill, tools, and techniques used by the adversary in the event. The capability highlights the adversary's tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).
The capability can include all techniques used to attack the victims, from the less sophisticated methods, such as manual password guessing, to the most sophisticated techniques, like developing malware or a malicious tool.
Capability Capacity is all of the vulnerabilities and exposures that the individual capability can use.
An Adversary Arsenal is a set of capabilities that belong to an adversary. The combined capacities of an adversary's capabilities make it the adversary's arsenal.
5. Infrastructure
Infrastructure -- is also known as software or hardware. Infrastructure is the physical or logical interconnections that the adversary uses to deliver a capability or maintain control of capabilities. For example, a command and control centre (C2) and the results from the victim (data exfiltration).
The infrastructure can also be IP addresses, domain names, email addresses, or even a malicious USB device found in the street that is being plugged into a workstation.
Type 1 Infrastructure is the infrastructure controlled or owned by the adversary.
Type 2 Infrastructure is the infrastructure controlled by an intermediary. Sometimes the intermediary might or might not be aware of it. This is the infrastructure that a victim will see as the adversary. Type 2 Infrastructure has the purpose of obfuscating the source and attribution of the activity. Type 2 Infrastructure includes malware staging servers, malicious domain names, compromised email accounts, etc.
Service Providers are organizations that provide services considered critical for the adversary availability of Type 1 and Type 2 Infrastructures, for example, Internet Service Providers, domain registrars, and webmail providers.
6. Event Meta Features
Six possible meta-features can be added to the Diamond Model. Meta-features are not required, but they can add some valuable information or intelligence to the Diamond Model.
Timestamp - is the date and time of the event. Timestamps are essential to help determine the patterns and group the malicious activity.
Phase - these are the phases of an intrusion, attack, or breach.
Result - While the results and post-conditions of an adversary’s operations will not always be known or have a high confidence value when they are known, they are helpful to capture such as information gathered in the reconnaissance stage or successful passwords/sensitive data exfiltration.
Direction - This meta-feature helps describe host-based and network-based events and represents the direction of the intrusion attack. The Diamond Model of Intrusion Analysis defines seven potential values for this meta-feature: Victim-to-Infrastructure, Infrastructure-to-Victim, Infrastructure-to-Infrastructure, Adversary-to-Infrastructure, Infrastructure-to-Adversary, Bidirectional or Unknown.
Methodology - This meta-feature will allow an analyst to describe the general classification of intrusion, for example, phishing, DDoS, breach, port scan, etc.
Resources - According to the Diamond Model, every intrusion event needs one or more external resources to be satisfied to succeed. Examples of the resources can include the following: software (e.g., operating systems, virtualization software, or Metasploit framework), knowledge (e.g., how to use Metasploit to execute the attack and run the exploit), information (e.g., a username/password to masquerade), hardware (e.g., servers, workstations, routers), funds (e.g., money to purchase domains), facilities (e.g., electricity or shelter), access (e.g., a network path from the source host to the victim and vice versa, network access from an Internet Service Provider (ISP)).
7. Social Political Component
The social-political component describes the needs and intent of the adversary, for example, financial gain, gaining acceptance in the hacker community, hacktivism, or espionage.
The scenario can be that the victim provides a "product", for example, computing resources & bandwidth as a zombie in a botnet for crypto mining (producing new cryptocurrencies by solving cryptographic equations through the use of computers) purposes, while the adversary consumes their product or gets financial gain.
8. Technology Component
Technology – the technology meta-feature or component highlights the relationship between the core features: capability and infrastructure. The capability and infrastructure describe how the adversary operates and communicates. A scenario can be a watering-hole attack which is a methodology where the adversary compromises legitimate websites that they believe their targeted victims will visit.
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