Network Attack Surface Simplification for Red and Blue Teams
Douglas Everson, Long Cheng · 2020
Network port scans are a key first step to developing a true understanding of a network-facing attack surface. However in large-scale networks, the data resulting from such scans can be too numerous for Red Teams to process for manual and semiautomatic testing. Indiscriminate port scans can also compromise a Red Team seeking to quickly gain a foothold on a network. A large attack surface can even complicate Blue Team activities like threat hunting. In this paper we provide a cluster analysis methodology designed to group similar hosts to reduce security team workload and Red Team observability. We also measure the Internet-facing network attack surface of 13 organizations by clustering their hosts based on similarity. Through a case study we demonstrate how the output of our clustering technique provides new insight to both Red and Blue Teams, allowing them to quickly identify potential high-interest points on the attack surface.