In this digital forensics investigation, we will analyze a security incident involving a compromised virtual machine in a web hosting environment. As SOC analysts, our task is to reconstruct the attack timeline, identify the attack vectors, determine how the system was compromised, and understand what malicious activities were performed on the compromised host. This investigation will leverage a variety of network forensics tools including Wireshark, Brim (Zui), NetworkMiner, and IDA Pro to analyze the captured network traffic and extracted artifacts. We will examine the PCAP file to identify initial access methods, analyze authentication attempts, reconstruct file transfers, and reverse engineer malicious code. Throughout this process, we'll employ fundamental cybersecurity concepts such as traffic analysis, credential security assessment, malware behavior analysis, and persistence mechanism identification.
The techniques demonstrated in this walkthrough are representative of real-world incident response scenarios where analysts must piece together evidence from disparate sources to form a complete picture of an attack. We'll systematically examine how the attacker gained initial access, escalated privileges, established persistence, and potentially exfiltrated data or deployed additional payloads. By working through this lab, you'll develop practical skills in network traffic analysis, Linux system security, malware behavior analysis, and forensic investigation techniques. The investigation will reveal how seemingly simple security issues can lead to significant compromises when exploited by determined attackers, and highlight the importance of defensive measures such as strong password poli