Recent intrusion into the networks of organizations like Office of Personnel Management, Sony, JPMorgan Chase, and British Airways have shown that the question isn’t “if” your organization will be targeted, but “when”. With these attacks and many others in recent years, incident response teams have had to rapidly change tactics from the “image-and-forget” methodology to live box forensics and containment. During these engagements, forensic analysts must actively track and monitor an adversary in their network while preventing the adversary from recognizing detection but most tools are not up to the job. PowerShell brings the flexibility and in-memory nature to defenders to tackle live threats.
In this talk, I will cover how my project, PowerForensics, can provide the Digital Forensics/Incident Response community with an all in one toolset for attack response and investigation. By leveraging PowerShell’s access to the Windows API and .NET framework, PowerForensics provides investigators with a forensically sound “live” investigation platform without the need to image the hard drive. I’ll cover the background and overview of PowerForensics, including how its various capabilities can facilitate the investigation of advanced actors at scale. Finally, I’ll cap off with a complex demo, showing how PowerForensics can help blue teams investigate the real attacks they’re now facing. PowerShell isn’t just for the red team anymore.