Full Report
Our web server lost a drive yesterday, however things seems to be back to normal. If you notice broken links or scripts, we’d appreciate a mail to info at sensepost.com.
Analysis Summary
# Incident Report: Web Server Drive Failure
## Executive Summary
This incident involved the physical failure of a hard drive on the organization's web server. The immediate impact was likely a disruption or corruption of the served content, although the statement indicates that services appear to be back to normal. The primary "attack vector" observed was hardware failure, not malicious cyber activity.
## Incident Details
- **Discovery Date:** Implied yesterday (relative to the January 13, 2010 publication date).
- **Incident Date:** Implied yesterday (relative to the January 13, 2010 publication date).
- **Affected Organization:** SensePost
- **Sector:** Security Consulting / Technology
- **Geography:** Undisclosed (Presumed international based on context, but not specified)
## Timeline of Events
### Initial Access
- **Date/Time:** Undisclosed
- **Vector:** Hardware Failure (Physical Disk Failure)
- **Details:** A hard drive on the web server experienced a catastrophic failure.
### Lateral Movement
- *Not applicable for a hardware failure incident.*
### Data Exfiltration/Impact
- **Impact:** Potential corruption or inaccessibility of web server data (links/scripts broken). Services are reported as returned to normal.
### Detection & Response
- **Detection:** Unspecified, likely through monitoring or user reports/internal testing noticing broken components.
- **Response Actions:** Unknown maintenance/recovery actions were performed leading to services returning to "normal."
## Attack Methodology
*Note: As this was a hardware failure, standard cyber attack vectors are not applicable.*
- **Initial Access:** Physical Hardware Degradation/Failure.
- **Persistence:** N/A
- **Privilege Escalation:** N/A
- **Defense Evasion:** N/A
- **Credential Access:** N/A
- **Discovery:** N/A
- **Lateral Movement:** N/A
- **Collection:** N/A
- **Exfiltration:** N/A
- **Impact:** Loss of data integrity/availability related to the failed drive.
## Impact Assessment
- **Financial:** Undisclosed, likely limited to repair/replacement costs.
- **Data Breach:** No evidence of a cyber data breach. Potential data loss limited to the files residing on the failed drive.
- **Operational:** Temporary disruption to web services requiring user feedback to verify full restoration.
- **Reputational:** Minimal, reported internally as resolved.
## Indicators of Compromise
- **Network Indicators:** N/A (No malicious network activity suggested)
- **File Indicators:** Potential corruption of files associated with the failed disk.
- **Behavioral Indicators:** System behavior changes related to disk read/write errors (preceding or immediately following failure).
## Response Actions
- **Containment Measures:** Unspecified, potentially isolating the failing drive or taking the affected service offline temporarily.
- **Eradication Steps:** Unspecified, likely involved replacing the failed drive.
- **Recovery Actions:** Restoring services and ensuring functionality ("things seems to be back to normal"). Users were asked to email info at sensepost dot com regarding any lingering issues (broken links/scripts).
## Lessons Learned
- Hardware redundancy (RAID configuration or similar) was potentially insufficient or failed to prevent disruption.
- A clear communication channel (the feedback email) was established to verify post-recovery functionality.
## Recommendations
- Implement and verify proper RAID configurations or other hardware redundancy solutions for critical infrastructure like web servers to ensure automatic failover upon drive failure.
- Review and test off-site backups to ensure quick restoration capability in case of total hardware loss, even if a single drive failure was the initial event.