Background: The Distinctive Panorama of the Black Hat NOC
Working the Black Hat Safety and Community Operations Middle (NOC) presents a singular set of challenges and expectations. In contrast to a typical company surroundings the place any hacking exercise is straight away deemed malicious, the Black Hat convention is a nexus for cybersecurity analysis, coaching, and moral hacking. Consequently, we anticipate and even anticipate a major quantity of exercise that, in different contexts, can be thought-about extremely suspicious or outright hostile. This consists of varied types of scanning, exploitation makes an attempt, and different adversarial simulations, typically carried out as a part of official trainings or unbiased analysis.
Including to this complexity is the Carry Your Personal System (BYOD) nature of the convention community. Attendees join a wide selection of private units, making conventional endpoint telemetry (like EDR options) a major problem for complete monitoring. As such, our main focus was on sturdy network-based telemetry for detection and risk searching.
Overview
This writeup particulars a latest investigation inside the Black Hat Safety and Community Operations Middle (SNOC), highlighting the crucial position of built-in safety instruments and early detection in mitigating potential threats, significantly when originating from inside a high-profile coaching surroundings.
On August 4, 2025, a Cisco XDR analytics alert flagged “Suspected Port Abuse: Exterior – Exterior Port Scanner.” The alert indicated an inner host from the “Defending Enterprises – 2025 Version” coaching room was actively concentrating on an exterior IP tackle, which resolved to a site belonging to the Def Con cybersecurity convention. This exercise aligned with the MITRE ATT&CK framework’s Reconnaissance tactic (TA0043), particularly the Lively Scanning approach (T1595).
Investigation Workflow: A Multi-Device Strategy to Fast Response
Part 1: Assault Triage With Cisco XDR
The Cisco XDR analytics incident offered the preliminary alert and connection flows, providing speedy visibility into the suspicious community exercise. Detecting this on the reconnaissance part is essential, as early detection within the MITRE ATT&CK chain considerably reduces the danger of an adversary progressing to extra impactful phases.
We noticed a excessive confidence incident involving two IP addresses from an inner subnet connecting with a single exterior IP tackle. The related alert was labeled as a suspected port abuse by Cisco XDR.
Cisco XDR’s ‘Examine’ function then allowed us to additional drill down into and visualized the connection flows related to that exterior IP tackle. It additionally searched in opposition to a number of risk intelligence sources for any status related to the observables. The exterior host was not discovered to have a malicious status.
Part 2: Goal Identification With Cisco Umbrella
We used Cisco Umbrella (DNS resolver) to verify that the goal IP resolves to a single area. The area seems to be owned by Def Con and hosted in the USA, by Comcast. The direct affiliation with the Def Con Cybersecurity Convention instantly raised issues about unauthorized reconnaissance in opposition to one other main occasion’s infrastructure.
Cisco Umbrella good search lookup of the area confirmed that the area has a low danger and is classed beneath the “Hacking/Conventions” class. It was confirmed by Cisco Umbrella to belong to the Def Con conference.
Part 3: Visitors Evaluation
Analyzing the NetFlow visitors in XDR analytics offers us a right away perception that port scanning has probably occurred.
Pivoting into Cisco Firepower Administration Console (FMC), we ran a report of the related visitors from the Cisco Firepower Administration Console.
The report graphed the highest 100 vacation spot ports related to the visitors and painted a really clear image. It confirmed that the inner host was systematically scanning varied ports on the exterior goal. Notably, we excluded frequent internet ports like 80 and 443, which helped us keep away from taking a look at probably reliable visitors. Every port was scanned exactly 4 instances, indicating a methodical, automated exercise, totally in step with a devoted port scan.
For additional validation and quantification, we then queried Palo Alto Networks firewall logs in Splunk Enterprise Safety (ES). The Splunk question confirmed 3,626 scanning occasions between 2025/08/04 17:47:07 and 2025/08/04 18:20:29.
Constant port counts additional validated automated scanning.
Part 4: Perpetrator Identification
Using our group’s Slack Bot API, which is built-in with Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM, we have been in a position to shortly determine the supply machine. This included its MAC tackle and hostname, and we pinpointed it as working straight from the Black Hat coaching room, particularly ‘Defending Enterprises – 2025 Version’:
Lastly, we have been in a position to seize the complete PCAP of the visitors as extra proof, utilizing our full packet seize device, Endace Imaginative and prescient. This investigation confirmed that the unauthorized scanning originated from a scholar in a coaching room. The offender was shortly recognized and instructed to stop the exercise. The incident was then closed, with continued monitoring of the coaching room and its members.
Potential Dangers Highlighted by the Incident
- Reputational Harm: Such incidents can injury the status of Black Hat as a premier cybersecurity occasion, eroding belief amongst members, companions, and the broader safety group.
- Facilitating illegal Exercise: Extra critically, if left unchecked, these actions may result in Black Hat infrastructure being leveraged for illegal exercise in opposition to exterior third events, probably leading to authorized repercussions and extreme operational disruptions. Swift detection and remediation are important to uphold belief and stop such outcomes.
Decision and Key Takeaways: Imposing Coverage and the Worth of Swift Motion
The investigation confirmed unauthorized scanning originating by a scholar. Following this, the offender was shortly recognized and made to stop the exercise. The incident was closed, with continued monitoring of the coaching room.
- The Criticality of Early Detection: This case exemplifies the worth of detecting adversarial exercise on the Reconnaissance part (TA0043) by way of strategies like Lively Scanning (T1595). By figuring out and addressing this conduct early, we prevented potential escalation to extra damaging ways in opposition to an exterior goal.
- Built-in Tooling: The seamless integration of Cisco XDR, Cisco Umbrella, Cisco FMC, Splunk ES, Slack API integration, Endace Imaginative and prescient and Palo Alto Cortex XSIAM enabled speedy detection, detailed evaluation, and exact attribution.
- Vigilance in Coaching Environments: Even in managed, instructional settings like Black Hat, steady monitoring and swift response are paramount. The dynamic nature of such environments necessitates sturdy safety controls to stop misuse and keep community integrity.
- Coverage Enforcement: Clear communication and constant enforcement of community utilization insurance policies are important to handle expectations and stop unauthorized actions, whether or not intentional or experimental.
About Black Hat
Black Hat is the cybersecurity business’s most established and in-depth safety occasion sequence. Based in 1997, these annual, multi-day occasions present attendees with the newest in cybersecurity analysis, improvement, and traits. Pushed by the wants of the group, Black Hat occasions showcase content material straight from the group by Briefings shows, Trainings programs, Summits, and extra. Because the occasion sequence the place all profession ranges and educational disciplines convene to collaborate, community, and focus on the cybersecurity subjects that matter most to them, attendees can discover Black Hat occasions in the USA, Canada, Europe, Center East and Africa, and Asia. For extra info, please go to the Black Hat web site.
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