I noticed today that a lot of people are struggling with antivirus alerts, specifically Microsoft Defender:
1) try to understand the alarm itself and at which point in the attack this would happen: phishing email = early, credential access (especially admin credentials) or suspicious C2 IPs = middle, ransomware/data upload = late.
2) what should be the attackers previous and next step then? (just look at 1 again: early/middle/late)
3) can you see this previous/next step in the logs? Look especially for evidence of execution. Attackers want to "do" something. Executables, scripts, PowerShell, command line, services, scheduled tasks?
If you cannot see any previous or any next steps, ask yourself if you're blind (are your logs empty? Timeframe not available?) or if there really aren't any. If there aren't any, it's likely a false positive. If there are, escalate.
Happy hunting!
#DFIR #knowledgedrop #microsoftdefender #antivirus