1.
Can’t Touch This: Detecting
Lateral Movement in Zero-Touch
Environments
Phillip Marlow
DEF CON Cloud Village 2020
Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Case Number 20-2069

2.
Disclaimers & Acknowledgements
Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Case Number 20-2069
©2020 The MITRE Corporation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The author's affiliation
with The MITRE Corporation is provided for identification purposes only, and
is not intended to convey or imply MITRE's concurrence with, or support for,
the positions, opinions, or viewpoints expressed by the author.
Research conducted to fulfill degree requirements for the
SANS Technology Institute’s Master of Science degree.
Thank you to Tanya Baccam, Faculty Research Advisor
Thank you to my wife Madeline,
whom I also don’t speak for in
this presentation.

3.
> whoami
• Security + DevOps =
• Wrote my first vulnerable code in
elementary school
• Began learning to write exploit code in
middle school
• First time DEF CON speaker
• Learning through hacking

4.
Why Should I Care About DevOps?
• Running any applications? That’s
just the way it is now.
• Cloud native
• It’s also better for security
@redteamwrangler
https://teespring.com/shop/my-c2-has-five-nines-front

5.
Attacker’s Options
Internet
Workstation
Bastion
App Server
Source Repo
Test
Servers
Configuration
Server
1 2
3

6.
Traditional Application Deployment
• Developer gives Ops a deployment package and install instructions
• Ops logs in to app server, manually installs software
• Time to patch? Another manual login and install

7.
Traditional Lateral Movement
• To log in and do configuration, Ops has highly privileged credentials
• Often the credentials are stored in plaintext on Ops workstations:
• SSH Keys, e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa
• API Tokens/Keys, e.g. ~/.aws/credentials
• Attackers use these to move deeper into the environment to steal
data, install malware, steal compute resources, etc

8.
What Is Zero-Touch?
• Google defined Zero-Touch Networking/Production
• Used by mature DevOps organizations
https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/
protected-files/srecon19emea_slides_wolafka.pdf
https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-
publication-data/pdf/45687.pdf

9.
Zero-Touch Deployment
https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/conference/protected-files/srecon19emea_slides_wolafka.pdf
No Humans

10.
Zero-Touch Deployment
Internet
Workstation
Bastion
App Server
Source Repo
Test
Servers
Configuration
Server
3

11.
Traditional Lateral Movement
Internet
Workstation
Bastion
App Server

12.
Lateral Movement in a Zero-Touch Network
Internet
Workstation
Bastion
App Server
Source Repo
Test
Servers
Configuration
Server

13.
Detecting Lateral Movement
• Define protected servers
• Define human access points
• Watch for ANY connections from the manual access points to
protected servers
• Alert, investigate, etc…
• Profit!

14.
Demo Time

15.
But What About Cloud?!
• Traffic Mirroring/Virtual Network Tap/Packet Mirroring
• Flow Logs
• Tagging/Asset Inventory is important
• But… there are visibility challenges

16.
Next Steps
• If you’re not zero-touch yet – do it!
• Implement this detection on your platform of choice
• Tailor it to your specific environment
• Correlate these events with other suspicious traffic

17.
Lessons Learned
• Know your network
• Don’t be afraid to look for stupid simple things

18.
Thank You!
Phillip Marlow
@wolramp