‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the SOC,
Not a P1 was firing, not even on logs.
The servers were all patched by sysadmins with care,
In hopes that no hackers would dare to be there.
The admins were nestled all snug in their beds,
And visions of tickets were not in their heads.
And I in my onesie, with my favorite guide,
Had just settled down for a long coding ride.
When out in the cloud there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the keyboard I flew like a flash,
Flipped open the laptop and opened up Bash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
Then what in response to my hunting queries appeared,
But process injection and Windows logs that were cleared.
That process injection, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment the actor must be Saint Nick.
More rapid than eagles his lateral movement came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called my servers by name!
“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the stack! Only one person’s on call!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So to the domain using escalated access they flew,
With a sleigh full of malware and Mr. Cyber-Nick too.
And then, in a twinkling, I saw alerts in the queue,
The attack launching and chaining grew and it grew.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Mr. Cyber-Nick came with a bound.
He was dressed in all black, one nefarious dude,
And his hoodie was stained with coffee and food.
A bundle of malware he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a hacker just opening his pack.
His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.
The edge of a Juul he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.
But a movement of files and bandwidth charts all in red,
Warned me of ransomware and filled me with dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And tried to infect all the servers, then turned with a jerk.
But our defenses were strong, and his attack was repelled,
And he soon found himself trapped in a honeypot shell.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!
Thanks for the challenge, but I’ll have to retreat,
Your network defenses are too strong to defeat.
I’ll have to come back another time, I suppose.”
So I updated notes, and marked the incident closed.