Monitor Host Protection

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This article provides various options to monitor and track any detected attacks/threats by VSP Host Protection.

There are three ways to monitor Host Protection by VSP:

The widgets on the Dashboard provide a high-level view of the health of the associated hosts
Detected attacks/threats are reported as incidents in the CMS
Reports can be scheduled as and when required for any desired time frequency

Dashboard

Widgets like Hosts Process Classification, Host Script Execution and Top-N Affected Hosts provide real-time snapshots from the configured Hosts
The dashboard contains the below tiles:
1. App Control Violation - Depicts the number of ACP (App Control Policy) violations
2. Files Scanned - Depicts the number of Files Scanned

If one or more incidents are related to a profile or the associated libraries, they are displayed as shown below. Hover over the icon to view detailed information on the detected incidents. A click on the icon displays Monitor > Incidents page with the list of incidents related to the profile
The incident can be viewed at the executable level also with the incident icon and the Source as Incident. A click on the icon displays the Monitor > Incidents page with the list of incidents related to the executable
On Windows servers, when both Memory Exploit Protection and Library Monitoring are enabled in protect mode, for certain library injection attacks, MEP detects and kills the sourcing process (that is trying to inject a malicious library into a benign process). This attack is reported as a Memory Exploit Protection incident and NOT as a New Library incident
All the incidents are reported in the page Monitor > Incidents

There are two types of process incidents reported by VSP:
1. New Process – In situations where a new process is detected other than the allowlisted processes
2. Process Modified – In situations where a process name and path are the same, but a checksum mismatch is detected
If any script-hosting processes (like powershell, cscript.exe, wscript.exe, jscript.exe, python) is executed in detect mode, the command will complete its run. But if it is not a part of the allowlist, an incident is reported. It can be added to the allowlist if desired
Child Commands:
1. Common commands like ls, dir, ping, ipconfig can be executed along with powershell. No incidents will be reported on VSP and no executables need to be allowlisted
2. Whenever a command that invokes a child process is executed, two incidents – one for the parent process and another for the child process are reported
3. Commands like: -enc, -noP must be allowlisted before they are executed
The below truth table describes various scenarios and the type of incidents reported

Process Name	Process Path	Process Checksum	Incident Type
No Match	Match	Match	No Incident
No Match	Match	No Match	New Process
No Match	No Match	Match	No Incident
No Match	No Match	No Match	New Process
Match	Match	Match	No Incident
Match	Match	No Match	Process Modified
Match	No Match	Match	No Incident
Match	No Match	No Match	New Process

There are three types of library monitoring incidents reported by VSP:
1. New Library – In situations where a new library is detected other than the allowlisted libraries
2. Library Modified – In situations where a library is allowlisted, but a checksum mismatch is detected
3. Library Hijack – In situations where a library is allowlisted, but a path mismatch is detected
The below truth table describes various scenarios and the type of incidents reported

Library Name	Library Path	Library Checksum	Incident Type
No Match	Match	Match	No Incident
No Match	Match	No Match	New Library
No Match	No Match	Match	No Incident
No Match	No Match	No Match	New Library
Match	Match	Match	No Incident
Match	Match	No Match	Library Modified
Match	No Match	Match	No Incident
Match	No Match	No Match	Library Hijack

While ACP violations (Fileless and Process Disallowed) are reported in the incident screen, they may not show a visual "warning" symbol in the Host Profile and Edit Allowlist screen
The script monitoring incidents are reported as “File-based Application Policy Violation” incidents
The various types of ACP incidents are:

Event Type	Description
Access Control Violation	If a process is spawned on the configured host that violates the configured ACP rules under the section File-less Execution Rules > User Access Control, VSP generates an incident
Child Process Violation	If a child process is spawned on the configured host while the ACP is configured to "block" under Dynamic Execution Rule, VSP generates an incident
Command-line Violation	If a command is executed on the configured host that violates the configured ACP rules under the section File-less Execution Rules > Command Line, VSP generates an incident
Parent Process Violation	If a process is spawned on the configured host that violates the configured ACP rules under the section File-less Execution Rules > Parent Process Control, VSP generates an incident
Process Disallowed Violation	Whether a process is allowlisted or not, if Process Disallowed rule is created for it, ACP rule takes precedence over allowlisting. VSP blocks the process and generates an incident
Script Monitoring	If a process is spawned on the configured host while the ACP is configured not to allow the file extension under File-based execution Rule, VSP generates an incident

There are two reports that can be configured for Host Protection:

Suspended Processes Report – Provides detailed information about the protection actions carried out by VSP Host Monitoring feature on the enabled hosts
Host Monitoring Report – Provides detailed information related to all the process and library monitoring attacks along with ACP attacks detected for the configured hosts

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