hunting-advanced-persistent-threats

name	hunting-advanced-persistent-threats
description	Proactively hunts for Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) activity within enterprise environments using hypothesis-driven searches across endpoint telemetry, network logs, and memory artifacts. Use when conducting scheduled threat hunting cycles, investigating anomalous behavior flagged by UEBA, or validating that known APT TTPs are not present in the environment. Activates for requests involving MITRE ATT&CK, Velociraptor, osquery, Zeek, or threat hunting playbooks.
domain	cybersecurity
tags	["MITRE-ATT&CK","threat-hunting","APT","Velociraptor","osquery","Zeek","TTP","NIST-CSF","EDR"]
subdomain	threat-intelligence
version	1.0.0
author	oyi77
license	Apache-2.0
d3fend_techniques	["File Metadata Consistency Validation","Application Protocol Command Analysis","Identifier Analysis","Content Format Conversion","Message Analysis"]
nist_csf	["ID.RA-01","ID.RA-05","DE.CM-01","DE.AE-02"]

Hunting Advanced Persistent Threats

Overview

Cybersecurity skill for hunting advanced persistent threats. Follows industry best practices and security standards.

When to Use

Trigger phrases:

• "hunting advanced persistent threats"
• "Conducting proactive threat hunting sprints (typically 2–4 week cycles) based on"
• "A UEBA alert or anomaly detection system flags behavioral deviations warranting"
• "A peer organization or ISAC sharing partner reports active APT compromise and yo"

Use this skill when:

• Conducting proactive threat hunting sprints (typically 2–4 week cycles) based on newly published APT intelligence
• A UEBA alert or anomaly detection system flags behavioral deviations warranting deeper investigation
• A peer organization or ISAC sharing partner reports active APT compromise and you need to validate your own exposure

Do not use this skill as a substitute for incident response when a confirmed breach is in progress — escalate to IR procedures (NIST SP 800-61).

When NOT to Use

• When you lack proper authorization for testing
• For production systems without change management
• When the task requires legal or compliance expertise beyond technical scope

Prerequisites

• EDR platform with telemetry retention (CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, or SentinelOne) covering 30+ days
• Access to MITRE ATT&CK Navigator for hypothesis development
• Network flow data (NetFlow, Zeek, or Suricata logs) in a queryable SIEM
• Threat hunting platform or query interface (Velociraptor, osquery fleet, or Splunk ES)

Workflow

# Example: IOC detection
import re

IOC_PATTERNS = {
    "ip": r"\b(?:\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}\b",
    "domain": r"\b[a-z0-9-]+\.[a-z]{2,}\b",
    "hash_md5": r"\b[a-f0-9]{32}\b",
    "hash_sha256": r"\b[a-f0-9]{64}\b",
}

def extract_iocs(text: str) -> dict:
    return {k: re.findall(v, text)  k, v  IOC_PATTERNS.items()}