Welcome to File Analysis using TruffleHog.
My name is Tim Coakley, and I'll be your instructor for this course.
I'm really happy you've chosen to take this course.
So let's get started with some of the background information about TruffleHog.
TruffleHog was originally created by Dylan Ayrey, and has been actively
maintained for many years, and is publicly available on GitHub.
TruffleHog complements existing blue team security strategies by allowing
you to automatically assess and audit for secrets and credentials that may
be stored within source code repositories.
This is a unique feature that addresses a potentially
serious security gap in many environments.
TruffleHog uses the command line to operate and is
relatively simple to configure, use, and learn.
This tool can be used to assess multiple or single repositories,
as well as be configured to meet broad or specific
security requirements that you may need.
It's available currently as open source and is free to download from GitHub.
There are two key areas of interest when using TruffleHog.
First is performing an assessment or audit of a repo.
I will use the term repo a lot in this course,
and when I do, I'm referring to a source code repository,
such as GitHub.
TruffleHog can perform a search using the default configuration settings,
so with minimal changes, can quickly audit your repo environments.
This first option is great for first‑time use when you want to get an
idea of the TruffleHog search capabilities and as a way to perform a
quick assessment of a repo in your organization.
Secondly, is the customized assessments.
TruffleHog can provide a lot of output,
which could be overwhelming to a security team,
so you may only want to locate specific information.
Maybe you're only concerned about specific types of credentials
and want to control the output and gradually increasing the
search criteria and output as you mature.
Customizing and configuring an instance of TruffleHog to meet
specific use cases is a very powerful feature.
It's also worth mentioning that you can always run different
instances of TruffleHog in different environments,
each with their own custom settings.
How you choose to operate each instance will vary,
for example,
looking for high entropy strings indicative of secrets or tokens through to
performing custom regular expression searches, reporting can be displayed on
screen or sent to a file or other automation process.
Before I cover the details of TruffleHog and the technical commands,
it's worth covering and understanding cybersecurity frameworks.
There are several frameworks available,
and the choice depends on your organization to decide the most appropriate.
NIST is one organization that produces cybersecurity frameworks,
and these encompass a set of standards, guidelines,
and best practice to achieve a suitable level of
improved cybersecurity maturity,
which you can see here are covered under the categories identify,
protect, detect, respond, and recover.
Each category contains subcategories that are linked to
specific activities an organization needs to perform to
improve its cybersecurity maturity.
TruffleHog is a tool that helps an organization with
the anomalies and events category.
We can further narrow down the subcategories that link this
technology to specific technical activities.
TruffleHog can detect threats in the form of sensitive data
leakage and enable security professionals to analyze findings
and understand the targets at risk.
This can lead to understanding the methods used,
as well as the potential future impact.
Overall,
this helps to better inform an organization to help
prepare for future security strategies, to improve security,
and further mitigate risk.
TruffleHog forms part of the event data and correlation process.
The output from the tool can determine what impact malicious events may have.
The output from TruffleHog can also help determine
suitable thresholds for security alerts.
This course will demonstrate how to use TruffleHog and link
to the concepts being discussed here.
We also have the MITRE ATT&CK,
which provides different techniques a threat actor
may use against your organization.
In this course, we will look at unsecured credentials.
We want to identify and know which repos deployed in your
environment contain sensitive data leakage,
such as secrets and credentials.
We are going to look at how to identify unsecured credentials in
repos and how common it is for potential attackers to conduct
reconnaissance of your environment, potentially a precursor to an attack.
With the prevalence of software development and
open‑source management in organizations,
it's more important than ever to know what is being committed to repos.
Finally,
MITRE Shield is one framework that covers attack techniques and how you
can defend your environments against the attacks.
Using this,
we can link the attack techniques with the methods of defense, such
as DTE00012 ‑ Decoy Credentials, and creating user credentials that
are used for active defense purposes.
We will look at one method of committing unsecured
credentials to a repo which could be deployed to help
identify attackers targeting your organization.
So where does TruffleHog sit within your organization?
And the answer depends on your organization and its culture.
Since the results of TruffleHog may identify unsecured
credentials within your organization's repos,
these results may generate high‑priority security incidents,
as such may sit close with the security department,
monitored by the security operations team.
In addition to central security monitoring,
TruffleHog could be operated by software developers within your organization,
identifying credential leakage within each repo they are responsible
for, and this creates a layered approach to monitoring and improved
security awareness at the developer level.
TruffleHog could be run on a regular basis manually by an
analyst and the result reviewed each month. Equally, TruffleHog
could be scheduled to run automatically every day with a report
saved to a central location.
Whatever the configuration you decide,
TruffleHog will need to be configured to include all the repos under
your responsibility, to maximize the benefit of the tool, and reduce
the chance of missing important alerts.
This course will not cover installation steps as this is covered in
the TruffleHog GitHub page. As you follow along,
you'll be able to take away the ability to detect unsecured
credentials and why it's important to do so.
This also includes how persistent and opportunistic attackers can be
when trying to find vulnerabilities to then exploit and gain access
to your organization's environment.
Cybersecurity, in general, is a challenging, but exciting
area for the security professional,
and TruffleHog is one of the many useful tools that will
help you to defend your organization.
Okay, with that,
let's get into learning the benefits of TruffleHog and how to
use to help to secure your environments.