In this digital forensics and incident response (DFIR) scenario, analysts are tasked with investigating a security breach involving unauthorized remote access and abnormal outbound connections. The organization’s security monitoring systems flagged suspicious activity, prompting an urgent investigation to determine the source of the compromise, assess the scope of the impact, and identify the techniques used by the attacker.
The investigation involves analyzing system artifacts such as event logs and memory captures to track the execution flow of the malware. Attackers frequently use deceptive filenames and execute processes that blend in with legitimate system activities to evade detection. By leveraging forensic tools such as Event Log Explorer, Volatility, MemProcFS, and Timeline Explorer, investigators will trace malicious executions, uncover persistence mechanisms, and analyze the malware’s communication with external servers.
A critical aspect of the analysis is detecting how the malware establishes Command and Control (C&C) connections, executes payloads, and attempts to disable security defenses. The attacker’s use of Living Off the Land Binaries (LOLBins) plays a key role in the malware’s stealth, allowing it to operate under the radar by abusing legitimate Windows utilities. Additionally, the investigation will involve network forensics, revealing how the malware interacts with external infrastructure and the techniques used to exfiltrate data or retrieve additional payloads.
Through this walkthrough, we will reconstruct the timeline of events, identify key indic