Purple Team Operations
What is Purple Team?
Purple Team refers to a collaborative cybersecurity approach that involves both Red Teams (offensive security) and Blue Teams (defensive security) working together to improve an organization's security posture. The goal is to close the gap between the two teams, promoting communication and knowledge sharing to enhance detection and response capabilities.
Focus of Purple Team Activities
Below are some of the key focuses of Purple Team activities:
Collaboration: Unlike traditional Red Team operations, where offensive activities are conducted in isolation and results are later shared with the Blue Team, Purple Teams work together throughout the process. This collaboration ensures that defensive measures are tested and improved in real time.
Training and Knowledge Sharing: Purple Teams help train Blue Teams by sharing adversary TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures), enabling Blue Teams to better understand and defend against real threats. This may involve joint exercises where the Red Team demonstrates attack techniques while the Blue Team practices detection and response.
Continuous Improvement: The iterative process of attack and defense helps in the continuous improvement of security measures. By constantly testing and refining defenses against simulated attacks, the security posture becomes more robust over time.
Unified Objectives: Both teams work towards the common goal of improving the overall security of the organization. This alignment helps create a more cohesive security strategy where offensive and defensive efforts are not isolated but integrated.
Operational Benefits: The practice of Purple Teaming leads to practical improvements in security operations. For example, it helps identify gaps in security controls, improve incident response times, and fine-tune security monitoring and alert mechanisms.
Methodologies
MITRE ATT&CK: MITRE ATT&CK is a framework of threat tactics and techniques used by cyber adversaries, maintained by MITRE, a non-profit research and development organization. It is designed to be a common reference for describing cyber threats and helping organizations improve their detection and response capabilities. The framework is divided into different attack phases, including network reconnaissance, gaining access, execution, persistence, privilege escalation, information gathering, data exfiltration, and cleanup.
Cyber Kill Chain: The Cyber Kill Chain is a threat model that describes the stages of a cyber attack. It was developed by Lockheed Martin and is widely used as a tool to help organizations understand and protect against cyber threats. The model consists of seven phases:
Reconnaissance
Weaponization
Delivery
Exploitation
Installation
Command and Control
Actions on Objectives
The goal of the Cyber Kill Chain is to help organizations identify and disrupt attacks as early as possible, preventing attackers from achieving their final objectives.
Unified Cyber Kill Chain (UCKC): The UCKC is a model that details the stages of a cyber attack from preparation to execution and exploitation of objectives. It is an evolution and combination of other kill chain models, such as the Lockheed Martin Cyber Kill Chain and MITRE ATT&CK, offering a more comprehensive and detailed view of the tactics and techniques used by attackers. The UCKC aims to help security professionals better understand attacker methods and develop effective defense strategies.
TIBER-EU: The TIBER-EU (Threat Intelligence-Based Ethical Red Teaming) provides a detailed framework for implementing Purple Teaming, focusing on collaboration between Red Teams (offensive) and Blue Teams (defensive) to enhance the cybersecurity of an organization.
Roles and Responsibilities
White Team (WT): Responsible for making all necessary decisions during the test, ensuring that risk management controls are in place, and facilitating the transition to Purple Teaming when needed. The WT also ensures that all stakeholders understand and agree on the scope, objectives, and communication channels.
Threat Intelligence (TI) Provider: Provides expertise on the scenarios and TTPs to be used in Purple Teaming. The TI provider may add more advanced or tailored scenarios as needed.
Red Team (RT): Conducts simulated attacks, mimicking the TTPs of threat actors. During Purple Teaming, the RT is responsible for the offensive aspects and collaborates with TI to validate the plan.
Blue Team (BT): Handles all defensive aspects of the executed scenarios. During Purple Teaming, the BT may contribute additional scenarios and provide continuous feedback to the RT.
Communication and Collaboration
Communication Channels: Must be efficient and effective to avoid misunderstandings. The frequency and secure communication channels should be defined in advance by the WT, as outlined in the TIBER-EU framework.
Types of Purple Teaming
Catch and Release: This method involves controlled attacks by the Red Team, where, after a successful breach or exploitation attempt, the Blue Team must detect, respond to, and mitigate the threat. The attack is then "released" so that the defensive team can refine their strategies and techniques based on what they learned.
Objectives:
Improve the Blue Team's detection and response capabilities.
Help teams understand the TTPs used by adversaries.
Promote real-time incident analysis, offering immediate feedback.
Benefits:
Enhances the Blue Team's ability to handle real incidents.
Continuous improvement of both teams' skills.
Identification of gaps in security defenses.
War Gaming: This is a comprehensive simulation of attack and defense scenarios involving multiple stakeholders within the organization. This exercise is designed to test the team's readiness and the effectiveness of security policies and procedures.
Objectives:
Assess the overall readiness of the organization to respond to security incidents.
Identify strategic and operational weaknesses.
Promote communication and coordination among different teams and departments.
Benefits:
Improved collaboration and communication between security teams and other stakeholders.
Increased awareness of incident response processes.
Identification of gaps in security policies and procedures.
Collaborative Proof of Concept: This approach involves creating specific test scenarios where the Red Team and Blue Team work together from the beginning. They develop and implement proof-of-concept attacks to assess the effectiveness of current defenses and identify areas for improvement.
Objectives:
Validate new technologies and security controls.
Test the effectiveness of specific defenses against realistic threats.
Promote continuous collaboration between Red and Blue Teams.
Benefits:
Implementation of improvements based on practical tests and real results.
Increased knowledge and practical experience of the teams concerning new threats and technologies.
Development of a culture of continuous collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Characteristics of Purple Team
Blue Team:
Primary Role: Defends the organization against cyber threats.
Characteristics:
Business-Informed: The team is informed about the business needs and goals of the organization, enabling defense aligned with these objectives.
Familiarity with Architecture: Deep knowledge of the organization's architecture and infrastructure, facilitating the protection of critical assets.
Experts in Detection: Specialized skills in detecting threats and malicious activities within the network.
Red Team:
Primary Role: Emulates threats to test organizational defenses.
Characteristics:
Threat-Informed: Bases its activities on known and emerging threats, simulating real attacks.
"Red" Mindset: Adopts the mindset of an attacker, seeking to find and exploit vulnerabilities creatively and effectively.
Experts in Threat Emulation: Professionals experienced in reproducing the TTPs used by real adversaries.
Purple Team:
Primary Role: Couples and coordinates the Red and Blue Teams to maximize the capabilities of both.
Characteristics:
Business Threat-Focused Defense: Focuses on protecting against threats that pose direct risks to the business.
Context of How to Break (and Protect) the Most Critical Assets: Understands and simulates the context of attacks to improve the defenses of the organization's most valuable assets.
Aligns Detection with Threats: Ensures that detection mechanisms are aligned with identified threats, promoting a more effective and integrated defense.
Information Flow and Collaboration
Knowledge Transfer on Threat Defense and Detection: Providing critical information that helps the Purple Team improve defensive strategies.
Purple Teaming Offense Based on Identified Threats and Critical Asset Context: Enhancing the effectiveness of tests conducted by the Red Team.
Red Team Provides Threat Emulation Techniques and Offensive Mindset: Helping the Purple Team adjust defenses and improve detection.
Execution Process
Emulation Planning: Define the scope, goals, and objectives of the emulation activities. This includes identifying specific threats and the organization's critical assets.
Emulation Execution: Implementation of the planned attack scenarios using predefined TTPs.
Team Engagement (Real-Time Collaboration): During the execution of the tests, Red and Blue Teams collaborate in real time, providing immediate feedback on defenses and incident responses. The teams adjust attack techniques and defense strategies based on the observed results.
Closing Phase: After the completion of the tests, a replay workshop is held to review the results and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the defenses. In-depth analysis of the technical and business aspects of the defenses tested, highlighting the potential consequences of attacks and the necessary recovery measures. Exploration of alternative or more elaborate scenarios that were not fully evaluated during the testing phase due to time constraints or risks.
Execution Plan
The Purple Team has an execution plan to measure the efforts and success of the campaign, as well as ensuring that the Blue Team and Red Team are prepared.
Category | Attack | Defense | Attack Time | Detection Time | TTPs | Status |
Endpoint Security | XYZ | XYZ | XYZ | XYZ | XYZ | XYZ |
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