Chapter 8: Technical Threat Analysis – Threat Hunting and Pivoting

Closely aligned to threat analysis and enrichment, threat hunting and pivoting are also done in the analysis stage of the threat intelligence lifecycle. The concept of threat hunting and pivoting involves working off a hypothesis or non-biased analytical judgment and some sort of data to hunt or pivot on. Presumably, pivoting off that hypothesis or data will yield additional indicators, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and infrastructure used by a threat actor that can be monitored or alerted on. In this chapter, we will examine some core concepts related to threat hunting and pivot off that data to find related threat actor activity.

Closely related to performing threat intelligence enrichment and analysis, pivoting and threat hunting help build a web of knowledge for TTPs associated with campaigns, actor groups, and malware families that fall directly into the analysis stage of the intelligence...