Storm-0558 Government Hacking Campaign

Lab Terminal

In this terminal activity, we'll investigate how unusual or unauthorized network activity can reveal signs of compromise, similar to the Storm-0558 government hacking campaign in 2023. In that incident, attackers used forged authentication tokens to access secure email systems without triggering traditional login alerts. While the original attack leveraged cloud identity systems, defenders could still have detected the intrusion by monitoring abnormal or persistent outbound connections. In this activity, you will inspect active network sessions, capture live packets, and review system logs to identify suspicious external connections.

Instructions:

  • Use the help command to see all available commands.
  • Display all current network connections and their states: netstat -tulnp.
  • Identify which processes have established remote connections: lsof -i -P -n | grep ESTABLISHED.
  • Capture a short sample of live network traffic for analysis: tcpdump -i eth0 -c 20.
  • Filter active connections to show traffic leaving the local network: netstat -an | grep ESTABLISHED | grep -v '192.168'.
  • Review recent system logs for unusual or persistent network activity: journalctl -u network-manager --since '10 minutes ago' | tail -n 20

Review Questions

What is Storm-0558?
Which sectors were primarily targeted by Storm-0558?
How did Storm-0558 gain unauthorized access in early 2023?
When did Microsoft detect unauthorized access to its Microsoft 365 accounts?
What did Storm-0558 use to bypass security controls?
What was one key remediation step Microsoft took?
What was one lesson learned from the Storm-0558 incident?
Which of the following was a challenge in identifying the attack vector?
What role did Microsoft play in the aftermath of the breach?
What was one recommendation for improving cloud security?