As attackers use more advanced techniques, it’s even more important that defenders have visibility not just into each of the domains in their environment, but also across them to piece together coordinated, targeted, and advanced attacks. This level of visibility will allow us to get ahead of attackers and close the gaps through which they enter. To illustrate that imperative, the 2019 MITRE ATT&CK evaluation centered on an advanced nation-state threat actor known to the industry as Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) 29 (also known as Cozy Bear) which largely overlaps with the activity group that Microsoft calls YTTRIUM. . The test involved a simulation of 58 attacker techniques in 10 kill chain categories.
Microsoft participated in the second MITRE ATT&CK endpoint detection product evaluation published today. The evaluation is designed to test security products based on the ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques & Common Knowledge) framework, which is highly regarded in the security industry as one of the most comprehensive catalog of attacker techniques and tactics. Threat hunters use this framework to look for specific techniques that attackers often use to penetrate defenses. Testing that incorporates a comprehensive view of an environment’s ability to monitor and detect malicious activity with the existing tools that defenders have deployed across an organization is critical.
Although this test was focused on endpoint detection and response, MITRE ran the simulated APT29 attack from end to end and across multiple attack domains, meaning defenders benefited from visibility beyond just endpoint protection. This gave Microsoft the unique opportunity to bring Microsoft Threat Protection (MTP) to the test.
Microsoft Threat Protection expands Microsoft Defender ATP from endpoint detection and response (EDR) to an extended detection and response (XDR) solution, and is designed to provide extended detection and response by combining protection for endpoints (Microsoft Defender ATP), email and productivity tools (Office 365 ATP), identity (Azure ATP), and cloud applications (Microsoft Cloud App Security/MCAS). As customers face attacks across endpoints, cloud, applications and identities, MTP looks across these domains to understand the entire chain of events, identifies affected assets, like users, endpoints, mailboxes, and applications, and auto-heals them back to a safe state.
To fully execute the end to end attack simulation of APT29, MITRE required participants to turn off all proactive protection and blocking capabilities. For Microsoft Threat Protection, this meant that all the capabilities that would normally block this kind of attack such as automatic remediation flows, application isolation, attack surface reduction, network protection, exploit protection, controlled folder access, and next-gen antivirus prevention were turned off. However, Microsoft Threat Protection audit capabilities for these features enabled recording of a variety of points during the attack when MTP (had it been fully enabled) would have prevented or blocked execution, likely stopping the attack in its tracks.
During this evaluation Microsoft Threat Protection delivered on providing the deep and broad optics, near real time detection through automation, and a complete, end-to-end view of the attack story. Here is how Microsoft Threat Protection stood out:
Microsoft Threat Experts, our managed threat hunting service, also participated in the evaluation this year. Our security experts watched over the signals collected in real time and generated comprehensive, complementary alerts, which enriched the automated detections with additional details, insights and recommendations for the SOC.
Attackers are using advanced, persistent, and intelligent techniques to penetrate today’s defenses. This method of testing leans heavily into real-world exploitations rather than those found solely in a lab or simulated testing environment. Having been part of the inaugural round of the MITRE ATT&CK evaluation in 2018, Microsoft enthusiastically took on the challenge again, as we believe this to be a great opportunity, alongside listening to customers and investing in research, to continuously drive our security products to excellence and protect our customers.
This year, for the first time, we were happy to answer the community call from MITRE, alongside other security vendors, to contribute unique threat intelligence and research content about APT29, as well as in evolving the evaluation based on the experience and feedback from last year, yielding a very collaborative and productive process.
Thank you to MITRE and our customers and partners for your partnership in helping us deliver more visibility and automated protection, detection, response, and prevention of threats for our customers.
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