In today's rapidly evolving cyber threat landscape, organizations are increasingly adopting proactive measures to bolster their cybersecurity defenses. A prominent method is cyber threat hunting, which actively seeks out signs of malicious activity within an organization's network. Unlike traditional security measures that rely on automated systems to flag potential threats, cyber threat hunting is an iterative and proactive process that aims to identify and mitigate advanced threats that may otherwise go undetected.

This blog post delves into the Forensic Visualization Toolkit (FVT), a powerful tool designed to enhance digital forensics investigations, analyze digital evidence, and provide advanced visualizations to improve cybersecurity situational awareness. Developed by Jihane Najar, Marinos Tsantekidis, Aris Sotiropoulos, and Vassilis Prevelakis, FVT is positioned as an essential asset for cybersecurity professionals, offering intuitive and interactive tools that significantly amplify their capabilities to identify, analyze, and respond to threats.

Introduction to Cyber Threat Hunting and Visualization

Cyber threat hunting is a critical practice within the digital landscape, where organizations strive to protect their assets and sensitive information against a growing array of cyber threats, from sophisticated nation-state actors to opportunistic hackers. As the volume and complexity of cyber threats escalate, innovative approaches to threat detection become paramount. Visualization plays a vital role in this process, transforming complex data into actionable insights and revealing patterns, anomalies, and correlations that might otherwise remain hidden within raw data.

The Forensic Visualization Toolkit (FVT)

FVT is introduced as a novel tool for cyber threat hunting that leverages visual analytics to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of threat identification. By integrating data from various sources and employing cutting-edge visualization techniques alongside advanced data analytics, FVT empowers security analysts with tools to make informed decisions and gain a comprehensive perspective on cybersecurity issues.

Key Features of FVT

1. Intuitive and Detailed Visualizations: FVT offers real-time visualizations that are intuitive and detailed, enabling the simultaneous use of multiple views of the same data. This feature sets it apart from traditional visualization tools, which are often vertically integrated and less flexible.
2. Customized Implementation for Critical Infrastructure Forensics Analysis: Designed to adapt to the unique challenges of critical infrastructure environments, FVT allows organizations to tailor forensic services to their specific needs. This includes gathering effective data for post-incident analysis and integrating this analysis into a defense-in-depth strategy.
3. Innovative Forensics Services: FVT introduces timeline analysis, preconfigured views, and best practices to facilitate a deep dive into the sequence of events leading up to a security incident. Preconfigured views automatically adapt based on past situations, streamlining the analysis process.

Architecture and Implementation

FVT's frontend is based on the Angular.io framework, combined with various visualization libraries to cover specific data analysis needs. It can operate with its own storage facility, primarily the Elasticsearch engine, or use multiple other data sources. This flexibility is made possible through tailor-made converters that request data from respective sources and transform it for visualization.

FVT supports multiple deployment modes, including standalone applications with moderate requirements and containerized applications using Docker. This flexibility makes it easily integrable into existing environments.

Real-life Deployment and Use Cases

FVT has been deployed in various EU-funded research projects, demonstrating its capability to enhance cybersecurity operations. For example, in the JCOP project, the FVT dashboard has been configured to illustrate information ingested from the OpenCTI platform, allowing users to grasp the volume of entries across various categories and investigate data points indicating the presence of cyber threats.

FVT Timeline Analysis

In the HEIR project, FVT has been adapted to provide intuitive visualizations and forensic analysis within the healthcare sector. It helps identify possible threats by processing and combining large volumes of heterogeneous data, providing real-time and post-mortem forensic analysis.

Conclusion

FVT represents a multifaceted solution combining data analytics, advanced visualizations, and real-time threat mitigation. Its adaptability to various scenarios, from network monitoring to forensic data analysis, showcases its versatility in the ever-evolving field of cybersecurity. By providing an intuitive and interactive interface, FVT empowers organizations to stay ahead of cyber threats and safeguard their digital assets effectively.

FVT does not aim to replace existing security components but rather to serve as an umbrella, aggregating information from various sources into a single, intuitive dashboard. Future work will focus on conducting a comprehensive comparative analysis to assess FVT's performance against similar tools, ensuring it remains an intuitive and efficient tool for cybersecurity professionals.

References

This blog post is based on: J. Najar, M. Tsantekidis, A. Sotiropoulos and V. Prevelakis, "Enhancing Cyber Threat Hunting: A Visual Approach with the Forensic Visualization Toolkit," 2023 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (BigData), Sorrento, Italy, 2023, pp. 3035-3042, doi: 10.1109/BigData59044.2023.10386677. keywords: {Visualization;Data analysis;Digital forensics;Data visualization;Organizations;User experience;Computer security;cyber security;visualization;cyber threat hunting;Forensic Visualization Toolkit},