Project Ares Mission - Disable Botnet - Operation Goatherd

Overview

Missions are scenarios designed to help train and assess skill levels of learners within a realistic story that is either offensive or defensive (i.e. ransomware attack on a hospital). The network environment is more complex than a Battle Room scenario and requires the learner(s) to combine multiple skill sets to complete the learning objectives. They are played individually, or in teams to learn together. Facilitators can also choose to enable or disable hints and enter the scenario to tailor the learning experience.

Players enter an environment and are given mission orders, rules of engagement and must use their skills to compete objectives.

Mission Activity (Red Team - Offensive)

A group of hackers have been running a widespread financial scam by using a botnet network. Their activities have triggered a collapse at a National Bank, with thousands of defrauded account holders demanding their deposits from local branches. Intelligence as identified their command and control (C2) server; this server is a single point of failure for the botnet, so taking it down will prevent the scam from claiming more innocent victims.

• Load Time Easy: - 5 min
• Medium: - 5 min
• Time Limit - 8 hrs
• # of Tasks - 3
• Hints - Yes
• Save Session - Yes
• Team Based - Yes

Prerequisites

Learners should be familiar with basic Linux CLI, network protocols, password cracking & exploration and remote administration.

Objectives

The learner will conduct a scan of the C2 server for running services, identify a vulnerability, perform a brute force attack to obtain credentials and then kill the web server acting as the C2 orchestrator.

Outline

Mission Video Briefing