Perform Evidence & Entities Investigations (part 1)

By Ashwin Venugopal -

 


To read part 2 please click here


Investigate a File

Investigating the details of a file is associated with a specific alert, behavior, or event to help determine if the file exhibits malicious activities, identify the attack motivation, and understand the potential scope of the breach. Actions you can perform here includes:

  • Stop and quarantine
  • Add/edit indicator
  • Download file
  • Consult a threat expert
  • Action center 

Detailed Profile Page

File details, malware detection, and file prevalence

The file details, incidents, malware detection, and file prevalence cards display various attributes about the files and the details are such as the file's MD5, the virus Total Detection Ratio, and the Microsoft Defender AV detection if available, and the file's prevalence, both worldwide and within your organizations.

Alerts

The Alert tab provides a list of alerts that are associated with the file which covers much of the same information as the Alerts queue, except for the device group that the affected device belongs to, if applicable while allowing you to choose what kind of information is shown by selecting the customize columns from the toolbar above the column headers.

Observed in organization

This tab let you to specify a date range to see which devices have been observed with the file and show a maximum of 100 devices while using the slider or the range selector to quickly specify a time period that you want to check for the events involving the file and specify the time window as small as a single day which in turn allows you to see only the files that communicated with that IP address at that time, drastically reducing unnecessary scrolling and searching.

Deep analysis

This tab allows you to submit the file for deep analysis to uncover more details about the file's behavior and its effect within your organizations and after you submit the file, the deep analysis report will appear in this tab once the results are available. But, if the deep analysis did not find anything, the report will be empty, and the result space will remain blank.

File names

The file names tab lists all the names the file has been observed to use within your organizations.

File Response Actions

You can quickly respond to the detected attacks by stopping and quarantining files or blocking a file and after taking action on the files, you can check the activity details in the Action center. Response actions are available on a file's detailed profile page and they can run along the top of the file page while also including:  

Stop and quarantine file

You can contain an attack in your organization by stopping the malicious process and quarantining the file wherever it was observed. You can only take this action if:

  • The device you are taking action on is Windows 10, version 1703 or later.
  • The files does not belong to the trusted third-party publishers or not signed by the Microsoft. 
  • Microsoft Defender Antivirus must at least be running on the Passive mode.    

This action includes the stopping and running processes, quarantining the files, as well as deleting the persistent data, such as any registry keys and is limited to a maximum of 1000 devices and to stop a file on a larger number of devices, you can see the Add indicator to block or allow file.

Add indicator to block or allow a file

You can prevent the further propagation of an attack in your organization by banning the potentially malicious files or suspected malware which will prevent it from being read, written, or executed on the devices in your organization. 

  • Enable the block file feature- To start blocking the files, you first need to turn the Block or allow feature on in the Settings.
  • Allow or block file- When you add an indicator hash for a file, you can choose to raise an alert and block the file whenever a device in your organization attempts to run it. To stop blocking a file, remove the indicator. You can do so via the Edit Indicator action on the file's profile page. The files automatically blocked by an indicator won't show up in the files' Action center, but the alerts will still be visible in the Alerts queue. 

Download file

Selecting a Download file from the response actions allows you to download a local, password-protected .zip archive containing your file and whenever you select this action, a fly-out will appear from which you can record a reason as to why you are downloading the file while also setting up a password to open the file. However, if a file is not already stored by the Defender for Endpoint, you cannot download it, instead, you will see a Collect file button in the same location. If a file has not been seen in the organization in the past 30 days, the Collect file will be disabled. 

Check activity details in the cation center

The Action center provides the information on the actions that were taken on a device or file and you will be easily able to view the following details:

  • Investigation package collection
  • Antivirus scan
  • App restriction
  • Device isolation  

All the other related details are also shown, for example, submission date/time, submitting user, and if the action succeeded or failed.



To read part 2 please click here

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