Detecting ransomware activities within AWS environments

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You are an Amazon Web Services (AWS) admin who manages AWS resources and services across your organization. As part of your role, you need to be able to detect potential ransomware attacks that occur via your AWS resources.

Cloud ransomware can be deployed when attackers obtain high-privileged credentials from targeted users or resources. The searches in this use case help you to detect when users in your AWS environment are performing activities that are commonly associated with ransomware attacks, namely through the creation of KMS keys and encryption activities.

Data required

Amazon Web Services: CloudTrail data

How to use Splunk software for this use case

To deploy this use case, make sure that you have the Splunk ES Content Updates installed on your Splunk Enterprise Security deployment. This extensive content library empowers you to deploy out-of-the-box security detections and analytic stories to enhance your investigations and improve your security posture. If you do not have Splunk Enterprise Security, these detections will still give you an idea of what you can accomplish with SPL in the Splunk platform or with the free app, Splunk Security Essentials.

Some of the detections that can help you with this use case include:

Next steps

These resources might help you understand and implement this guidance:

Splunk Lantern Article: Detecting a ransomware attack
Splunk OnDemand Services: Use these credit-based services for direct access to Splunk technical consultants with a variety of technical services from a pre-defined catalog. Most customers have OnDemand Services per their Success Plan. Engage the ODS team at ondemand@cisco.com if you would like assistance.