Blindspotter: Big Data and machine learning can help detect early-stage hack attacks

When an employee account is compromised by malware, the malware establishes a foothold on the user’s computer – and immediately tries to gain access to additional resources. It turns out that with the right data gathering tools, and with the right Big Data analytics and machine-learning methodologies, the anomalous network traffic caused by this activity can be detected – and thwarted.

That’s the role played by Blindspotter, a new anti-malware system that seems like a specialized version of a network intrusion detection/prevention system (IDPS). Blindspotter can help against many types of malware attacks. Those include one of the most insidious and successful hack vectors today: spear phishing. That’s when a high-level target in your company is singled out for attack by malicious emails or by compromised websites. All the victim has to do is open an email, or click on a link, and wham – malware is quietly installed and operating. (High-level targets include top executives, financial staff and IT administrators.)

My colleague Wayne Rash recently wrote about this network monitoring solution and its creator, Balabit, for eWeek in “Blindspotter Uses Machine Learning to Find Suspicious Network Activity”:

The idea behind Balabit’s Blindspotter and Shell Control Box is that if you gather enough data and subject it to analysis comparing activity that’s expected with actual activity on an active network, it’s possible to tell if someone is using a person’s credentials who shouldn’t be or whether a privileged user is abusing their access rights.

 The Balabit Shell Control Box is an appliance that monitors all network activity and records the activity of users, including all privileged users, right down to every keystroke and mouse movement. Because privileged users such as network administrators are a key target for breaches it can pay special attention to them.

The Blindspotter software sifts through the data collected by the Shell Control Box and looks for anything out of the ordinary. In addition to spotting things like a user coming into the network from a strange IP address or at an unusual time of day—something that other security software can do—Blindspotter is able to analyze what’s happening with each user, but is able to spot what is not happening, in other words deviations from normal behavior.

Read the whole story here. Thank you, Wayne, for telling us about Blindspotter.