Redefining Success: Lessons from Threat Hunting at the Paris Olympics
The Ultimate Cyber Challenge: The Paris Olympics is a global spectacle demanding peak performance, not just from athletes, but
from every system supporting the event. For cybersecurity professionals, it represented an unprecedented challenge: a massive,
temporary digital environment under constant threat from the world's most sophisticated adversaries. Prior to starting Focused
Hunts, I had the privilege of leading a Cisco Talos team, tasked with a critical mission: proactive threat hunting across the Games'
core infrastructure. This isn't just a story about technology; it's about collaboration, foresight, and a redefined measure of success
in the relentless world of cyber defense.
The Landscape: A Digital Colossus Under Siege Imagine an IT environment that springs up for a few intense months, spanning across
Azure, Alibaba Cloud, government co-locations, and a multitude of SaaS/PaaS solutions. This was the operational canvas for the Paris
Olympics. Our concerns weren't just theoretical; they encompassed a diverse and formidable threat landscape, from highly organized
nation-states seeking strategic disruption, to determined hacktivists, and opportunistic organized crime groups. Our objective was
clear: protect the infrastructure supporting the Games, not the consumer-facing periphery.
Our Playbook: MITRE ATT&CK in a Multi-Cloud Arena The sheer scale and dynamic nature of this environment initially made a unified view
of threat hunting seem impossible. We needed a strategic framework that could standardize our approach across disparate technologies and
a globally distributed team. The MITRE ATT&CK framework became our cornerstone. We didn't try to cover every single technique; instead,
we standardized on identifying relevant tactics and then focused on specific techniques tailored to the technology landscape.
With limited time and resources, we divided these tactics among our global teams. The strategy wasn't to silo expertise by product, but
to leverage every applicable control for hunting. Our arsenal included Microsoft Log Analytics, Cisco security products (XDR, Secure
Endpoint, Umbrella), CrowdStrike Falcon, and several other critical telemetry sources. We relied heavily on customized queries within
Log Analytics to sift through the immense data flowing from Azure-hosted technologies, CrowdStrike Falcon, and Cisco security telemetry.
We proactively hunted for Indicators of Attack (IOAs) associated with high-risk behaviors like remote desktop software, activity involving
Tor nodes, and the exploitation of Living Off The Land Binaries and Scripts (LOLBAS).
The Human Element: Electric Chemistry and Global Collaboration Perhaps the most powerful tool in our arsenal was the team itself.
The chemistry across the global team was, in a word, electric. There wasn't a rigid adherence to individual roles; everyone contributed,
driven by a shared excitement to hunt across diverse telemetry sources. This collective spirit, fueled by strong communication over a
three-month period leading up to and during the Games, was crucial for navigating the complexity of such a large and temporary environment.
The shared purpose in securing an event of this magnitude fostered an unparalleled level of dedication and insight.
The Unexpected Victory: Hunting Blind Spots, Not Just Threats In threat hunting, success is often measured by the number of threats
neutralized. Our experience, however, offers a powerful alternative narrative. While we addressed numerous concerns, we didn't neutralize
any major, high-impact threats in the environment. This might sound counter-intuitive, but it speaks to a deeper form of success.
One of our most significant discoveries wasn't an active attack, but a critical blind spot. During our rigorous verification of telemetry
sources and security configurations, we uncovered that activity across the Microsoft Graph API interface was not being properly captured in
Log Analytics. This was a substantial oversight, which, if left unaddressed, could have provided a clear pathway for adversaries. The beauty
of a proactive hunt is finding such gaps before they are exploited. This discovery, made in the hunting activities leading up to the Games,
gave us precious time to implement proper logging and dedicate analyst resources to hunt within this newly visible log source.
Redefining Success: Situational Awareness and Proactive Assurance So, what does success look like when the dramatic incident response isn't
the headline? It’s about reducing blind spots and verifying security controls.
Threat hunting, at its core, is about far more than just blocking or neutralizing threats. It's about bringing unparalleled situational
awareness to operational teams, helping them truly understand their environment. It’s about verifying that controls are in place, configured
correctly, and providing the necessary data for both telemetry and enforcement. Our work generated insights into potential false positives,
provided assurance by verifying hypotheses, and educated everyone from administrators to executives on the ever-evolving threat landscape and
potential cyber attack chains.
For Focused Hunts, success is measured by helping our customers:
- Reduce their blind spots: Uncovering hidden vulnerabilities and configuration oversights.
- Verify their hypotheses: Confirming that security controls are operating as intended.
- Share experiences: Equipping teams with real-world knowledge in fighting advanced threats.
The Paris Olympics provided a unique proving ground. It reinforced our belief that proactive threat hunting isn't just an advanced security
function; it's a fundamental pillar for achieving true cyber resilience, providing peace of mind and operational certainty even in the most
high-stakes environments.
Is your organization ready to move beyond reactive defense and proactively secure your most critical assets?
Contact Focused Hunts to discover how our expert threat hunting services can reduce your blind spots and elevate your situational awareness.