Threat Hunting Playbook

A Threat Hunting Playbook provides a structured, repeatable methodology for proactively detecting adversaries, uncovering hidden threats, and improving SOC visibility. This playbook is designed for Blue Teams, SOC analysts, DFIR responders, and threat hunters.

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✔ Core Principles of Threat Hunting

• Proactive — hunting begins before alerts fire.
• Hypothesis-driven — every hunt starts with a question.
• Adversary-focused — based on attacker behavior, not signatures.
• Data‑centric — logs, telemetry, and artifacts drive conclusions.
• Iterative — hunts evolve as new evidence emerges.

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✔ Threat Hunting Workflow

1. Define the Hunt
   • Create a hypothesis
   • Map to MITRE ATT&CK techniques
   • Identify required data sources
2. Prepare the Environment
   • Collect logs (EDR, Sysmon, Zeek, Suricata, Elastic)
   • Validate visibility and coverage
   • Ensure time synchronization
3. Execute the Hunt
   • Query data sources
   • Pivot on suspicious events
   • Correlate across hosts and networks
4. Analyze Findings
   • Identify anomalies
   • Validate with threat intel
   • Determine adversary behavior
5. Document & Report
   • Record hypothesis, steps, evidence
   • Create detection rules
   • Recommend mitigations
6. Operationalize
   • Convert findings into alerts
   • Improve SIEM/EDR visibility
   • Feed lessons back into future hunts

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✔ MITRE ATT&CK Mapping

Every hunt should map to one or more ATT&CK techniques:

• Initial Access — phishing, drive‑by, valid accounts
• Execution — PowerShell, WMI, scripts
• Persistence — registry, scheduled tasks, services
• Privilege Escalation — token manipulation, UAC bypass
• Defense Evasion — obfuscation, disabling logs
• Credential Access — LSASS dumping, keylogging
• Lateral Movement — SMB, RDP, WinRM
• Command & Control — beaconing, encrypted channels
• Exfiltration — cloud storage, DNS tunneling

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✔ Common Hunting Hypotheses

• “An attacker is using PowerShell for remote execution.”
• “A compromised host is beaconing to a C2 server.”
• “An adversary is moving laterally using SMB or RDP.”
• “Credentials were harvested using LSASS memory access.”
• “Suspicious persistence mechanisms were created.”

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✔ Data Sources for Threat Hunting

• Endpoint — Sysmon, EDR, OSQuery, Velociraptor
• Network — Zeek, Suricata, PCAP, NetFlow
• Logs — Windows Event Logs, Linux audit logs
• Cloud — Azure AD, AWS CloudTrail, GCP logs
• Threat Intelligence — MISP, OpenCTI, Sigma

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✔ Detection Engineering Output

Every hunt should produce:

• New SIEM queries
• New detection rules (Sigma, Suricata, YARA)
• Improved logging requirements
• Updated dashboards
• Documented procedures

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✔ Example Hunt: Suspicious PowerShell Execution

Hypothesis

“An attacker is using PowerShell to execute malicious commands.”

Data Required

• Sysmon Event ID 1, 3, 7
• Windows Event Logs 4104
• EDR telemetry

Hunting Queries

• PowerShell with encoded commands
• PowerShell spawning unusual child processes
• Network connections initiated by PowerShell

Detection Output

• Sigma rule for suspicious PowerShell
• Elastic/Kibana visualization
• Alert for encoded command usage

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✔ Final Thoughts

Threat hunting is a continuous, proactive discipline that strengthens your SOC, improves visibility, and uncovers threats that traditional detection misses. Use this playbook as a foundation for building repeatable, hypothesis-driven hunts that evolve with adversary behavior.