Empowering Cybersecurity Teams with Cyber Range Toolset In our last blog, we learned about different cyber range teams and their preparedness. This knowledge would help us to plan the teams required for a Cyber Range with clear-cut roles and responsibilities. In this blog, we will learn about different tools required by cyber range teams to accomplish their tasks. Having knowledge of these tools and being able to identify and distinguish between them will enable cyber range teams to adopt the best tool suited for their respective purposes. Types of Tools 1. Red Tools: Red team members are the attackers. We need to enable them with attack tools, such as scripts for exploitation, malware or backdoor to inject targets, products for interception of data flows, abnormal traffic generators, deviation emulators, fuzz testing for discovering zero-day vulnerabilities, API fuzzing tools, SCA tools to help analyze vulnerable components in applications, tools for active & passive intelligence gathering, frameworks, weaponization, staging, lateral movement, escalation privileges, and data exfiltration etc. They need to be fully enabled and updated with new technologies and techniques to enable them to launch attacks. You can get more details from the Red Teaming/Adversary Simulation Toolkit and Pen Testing tools ( https://github.com/infosecn1nja/Red-Teaming-Toolkit) 2. Blue Tools: Blue team members are the defenders. They need to be enabled with the right set of tools to enable them to perform their tasks. One needs to ensure that they have tools for performing security analysis, incident management, log file analysis, digital forensics, analyzers of vulnerabilities, Vulnerability prioritizing tools, monitoring tools, sandboxes, and so on. You can get more details on Blue-Team-Tools (https://github.com/dcarlin/Blue-Team-Tools )and on SANS Faculty Free Tools (https://www.sans.org/img/free-faculty-tools.pdf?msc=sans-free-lp ) Yellow Tools: These are the tools required to manage security and improve defense perimeter, like Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) or Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), firewalls, antivirus, antimalware, systems, etc. Green Tools: These are meant for Infrastructure Monitoring like Hypervisors, Routers, and so on. White Tools: There are not many tools in this space as mostly all exercises are conducted in their specific, closed environments. Exito (Exercise Event Injection Toolkit) is an open-source tool. There are some more commercial tools available in the industry and some of them are custom created for the users. Purple Tools: There are not many tools for this activity, including PlexTrac and Harmony Purple as possible tools. Cyber tools are essential within cyber ranges as they provide realistic training environments, facilitate collaboration among cybersecurity professionals, and enable teams to better practice cybersecurity. They play a pivotal role in preparing individuals and organizations to effectively defend against evolving cyber threats. The key takeaway from this is the understanding of benefits and types of deployment and the skillset of members required. This culminates our journey of understanding cyber range, its utility, and its different roles and functions. Going ahead, we must understand the need for a cyber range and its benefits to an organization.

In our last blog, we learned about different cyber range teams and their preparedness. This knowledge would help us to plan the teams required for a Cyber Range with clear-cut roles and responsibilities.

In this blog, we will learn about different tools required by cyber range teams to accomplish their tasks. Having knowledge of these tools and being able to identify and distinguish between them will enable cyber range teams to adopt the best tool suited for their respective purposes.

Types of Tools

1. Red Tools: Red team members are the attackers. We need to enable them with attack tools, such as scripts for exploitation, malware or backdoor to inject targets, products for interception of data flows, abnormal traffic generators, deviation emulators, fuzz testing for discovering zero-day vulnerabilities, API fuzzing tools, SCA tools to help analyze vulnerable components in applications, tools for active & passive intelligence gathering, frameworks, weaponization, staging, lateral movement, escalation privileges, and data exfiltration etc. They need to be fully enabled and updated with new technologies and techniques to enable them to launch attacks. You can get more details from the Red Teaming/Adversary Simulation Toolkit and Pen Testing tools ( https://github.com/infosecn1nja/Red-Teaming-Toolkit)

2. Blue Tools: Blue team members are the defenders. They need to be enabled with the right set of tools to enable them to perform their tasks. One needs to ensure that they have tools for performing security analysis, incident management, log file analysis, digital forensics, analyzers of vulnerabilities, Vulnerability prioritizing tools, monitoring tools, sandboxes, and so on. You can get more details on Blue-Team-Tools (https://github.com/dcarlin/Blue-Team-Tools )and on SANS Faculty Free Tools (https://www.sans.org/img/free-faculty-tools.pdf?msc=sans-free-lp )

• Yellow Tools: These are the tools required to manage security and improve defense perimeter, like Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) or Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), firewalls, antivirus, antimalware, systems, etc.
• Green Tools: These are meant for Infrastructure Monitoring like Hypervisors, Routers, and so on.
• White Tools: There are not many tools in this space as mostly all exercises are conducted in their specific, closed environments. Exito (Exercise Event Injection Toolkit) is an open-source tool. There are some more commercial tools available in the industry and some of them are custom created for the users.
• Purple Tools: There are not many tools for this activity, including PlexTrac and Harmony Purple as possible tools.

Cyber tools are essential within cyber ranges as they provide realistic training environments, facilitate collaboration among cybersecurity professionals, and enable teams to better practice cybersecurity. They play a pivotal role in preparing individuals and organizations to effectively defend against evolving cyber threats. The key takeaway from this is the understanding of benefits and types of deployment and the skillset of members required.

This culminates our journey of understanding cyber range, its utility, and its different roles and functions. Going ahead, we must understand the need for a cyber range and its benefits to an organization.

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