Unraveling the Mysteries: Navigating Cloud Forensics

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Let's refresh our knowledge and understand what cloud forensics is.

In recent years, cybercrime has increasingly targeted cloud computing environments, making them a significant battleground. Cloud forensics, as defined by NIST, involves applying scientific principles and proven methods to reconstruct past cloud computing events. This process includes identifying, collecting, preserving, examining, interpreting, and reporting digital evidence.

Unlike traditional digital forensics, cloud forensics presents unique challenges due to factors like unknown physical location, inaccessibility, multi-tenancy, and multi-jurisdiction. In 2011, researcher Ruan coined the term Cloud Forensics and introduced dimensional models covering technical, organizational, and legal aspects, along with associated challenges. NIST further compiled a list of 65 challenges specific to cloud forensics, highlighting the complexities involved in investigating and addressing security incidents in cloud computing environments.

Cloud forensics is a branch of digital forensics that focuses on the investigation of data stored on cloud servers The use of cloud services presents several unique challenges for forensic investigators, including issues related to data acquisition, preservation, and analysis.

One of the key challenges of cloud forensics is the fact that data is often stored on servers located in multiple geographic locations, which can make it difficult to identify and collect relevant data. Additionally, cloud providers may have different policies regarding data retention and deletion, which can make it difficult to preserve data for investigative purposes. Another challenge of cloud forensics is the fact that cloud servers may be shared among multiple users, which can make it difficult to identify and isolate relevant data.

Cloud providers may also use encryption and other security measures to protect data, which can make it difficult to access and analyze data for investigative purposes. Finally, the dynamic nature of cloud computing, which involves the rapid deployment and scaling of resources, can make it difficult to track and preserve data over time.

Cloud Forensics Readiness

Forensics involves applying scientific methods to criminal and civil laws, serving as a reliable method for collecting and handling evidence at crime scenes. A crucial aspect of the forensic process is isolating the scene to avoid contaminating or altering the evidence, preventing any additional interference or tampering. This principle can also be extended to the examination of digital events.

Forensic readiness pertains to an organization's ability to adeptly recognize, safeguard, and scrutinize digital evidence when confronted with a security incident or data breach. In simpler terms, it signifies being prepared for a breach.

A comprehensive forensic readiness strategy encompasses the establishment of policies, procedures, and tools. These elements are essential for ensuring that an organization can efficiently respond to and recover from security incidents.

The advantageous outcome of having forensic readiness is that it equips organizations with the crucial evidence required for legal proceedings, a clear comprehension of the breach's extent, and, ultimately, the ability to mitigate the impact on their operations.

Check out ref link[3] for more details on cloud forensics readiness.

How do organization prepare for Cloud Forensics Readiness?

The increased number of security breaches in cloud environments has shown many organizations how severe the need for Cloud Forensics Readiness is. Indeed, a recent cloud forensics survey revealed that more than 80% of the respondents who were familiar with digital forensics expressed the need for “a procedure and a set of toolkits to proactively collect forensic-relevant data in the cloud is important”.

In order for any system to be forensically ready, two main objectives must be satisfied:

• Maximizing the ability to acquire digital evidence, and
• Reducing the costs of any digital forensics investigations.

Consequently, cloud forensics readiness can be identified as a mechanism aimed at reducing the cost of carrying out an investigation in a cloud environment by providing any relevant information needed before setting up the investigation.

To be ready for digital investigations in the cloud, organizations should:

1. Understand Cloud Provider Responsibilities:Know the shared responsibility model, where the cloud provider handles some security aspects, and customers are responsible for others.
2. Configure Logging and Monitoring:Turn on and set up logging and monitoring services provided by the cloud company to gather and store important data.
3. Implement Access Controls:Limit access to cloud resources and data by using role-based access control, multi-factor authentication, and other security measures.
4. Create and Test Incident Response Plans:Make an incident response plan designed for the cloud, and regularly check how well it works.
5. Leverage Cloud-Native Forensic Tools:Use tools and services from cloud providers that assist in gathering and analyzing digital evidence. Cado Security is a leader in cloud forensics, providing playbooks and free tools on their website. Open source tools like Prowler can be helpful too.

Comparative analysis of Log forensics:

Comparative analysis framework for log forensics based on the attributes required to perform log forensics are considered for comparison, i.e., log Collection, log Analysis, log Security, and log Storage.

The description of each essential characteristic for cloud log forensics is provided below.

– Log Collection

1. Log categories—This field lists the cloud log classification by each CSP at a higher level, i.e., user-level logs, cloud service logs, logs from non-cloud resources.

2. Security Logs—This field compares important security logs used by CSP for investigation, such as activity logs, access logs, VM logs, config logs, and flow logs.

3. Logging Agent—This field lists the logging agent used by each CSP to collect logs from non-cloud resources.

– Log Analysis

1. Log Analytics and Monitoring—This field compares log analytics and monitoring services rendered by each CSP.

2. Big data log analytics—This field lists the big data service used by each CSP to analyze huge volumes of cloud logs.

– Log security

1. Log integrity—This field compares the hashing algorithms used to ensure log integrity by each CSP.

2. Log confidentiality—This field compares the encryption algorithm used to encrypt the log files by each CSP.

3. Log Accessibility—This field compares the access control mechanism used to grant access to the log data based on the roles and access policies by each CSP. 4. Key management—This field details the key management service used by each CSP to store the encryption keys used to encrypt the log data and store generated hash values.

– Log storage

1. Log retention policy—This field compares the logs retained by each CSP, i.e., by default or by paid services.

2. Log archival—This field details the log storage service used to store logs for the long term by each CSP.

Let's take a sample example:

In cloud security, dealing with a compromised virtual machine (VM) involves two primary forensic approaches: "dead analysis" and "live analysis."

1. Dead Analysis:Procedure: When signs of compromise are detected, the common practice is to take a snapshot of the VM, shut down the instance, and move the image snapshot to an isolated environment.Concern: However, shutting down the instance may result in the loss of crucial information stored in the RAM or buffer, impeding the investigation process.
2. Live Analysis:Procedure: In this approach, the compromised VM remains operational, and evidence is directly gathered from the live system.Advantages:- Imaging RAM allows retrieval of important data.- Bypasses most hard drives and software encryption.- Identifies the cause of abnormal network traffic.- Particularly useful for active network intrusions.Performed by: Forensic analysts execute live forensics, capturing evidence, including disk, memory, and live-network data sent over compromised VM network interfaces.
3. Benefits of Collecting Live Networks:Reconstruction: Enables the reconstruction of events and visualization of traffic flow in real-time.Use Cases: Particularly valuable during active network intrusions or attacks.

By understanding and employing both dead and live analysis methods, cloud security professionals can enhance their ability to investigate and respond to compromised VMs effectively.

Forensics Workflows of Leading CSPs:

Forensic workflow is the sequence of tasks that processes the evidential data in every step. Based on the survey conducted, Springer has consolidated the analyzed data from Log Forensics (Network Forensics), Disk Forensics, and Memory Forensics of each CSP and presented a bird’s eye view of end-to-end forensic workflow for each CSP.

For more insights, refer to link [4]

Cloud forensics frameworks:

1] Cloud Forensics Triage Framework by SANS

2] A Framework for Cloud Forensic Readiness in Organizations

Tools:

1] Cloud Forensics Tools

Top must read:

1] NIST Cloud Computing Forensic Reference Architecture

2] Live forensics to analyze a cyberattack

3] Forensic Readiness in the Cloud

[4] An insight into cloud forensic readiness by leading cloud service providers

[5] Cloud Forensics Today: An Overview of Challenges and Trends by EC-Council

Conclusion

The adoption of the cloud computing model should inherently prioritize the inclusion of auditing facilities, specifically cloud forensics, an aspect that has been neglected and lacks the necessary attention. This oversight is the cause of the absence of a standardized operating procedure (SOP) for conducting cloud forensics across various Cloud Service Providers (CSPs).

Finally, based on the research conducted and after evaluation of the forensic procedures implemented by the leading CSPs considering the cloud forensic challenges reported by NIST. It is found that out of 65 challenges, only 12 challenges are addressed, and still a fair amount of work needs to be done to accomplish other challenges.

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) don't have a consistent and well-documented standard operating procedure. That's why lof of security practitioners, researchers stressing the importance of having standard forensic procedures (or forensic workflows) for different CSPs, specifically tailored for cloud environments. It's crucial for CSPs to document and share these forensic procedures to educate Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs), first responders, forensic experts, and others. This helps them handle incidents in a way that follows forensic practices properly.

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