Introduction

Chrome is trusted by millions of business users as a secure enterprise browser. Organizations can use Chrome Browser Cloud Management to help manage Chrome browsers more effectively. As an admin, they can use the Google Admin console to get Chrome to report critical security events to third-party service providers such as Splunk® to create custom enterprise security remediation workflows.

Security remediation is the process of responding to security events that have been triggered by a system or a user. Remediation can be done manually or automatically, and it is an important part of an enterprise security program.

Why is Automated Security Remediation Important?

When a security event is identified, it is imperative to respond as soon as possible to prevent data exfiltration and to prevent the attacker from gaining a foothold in the enterprise. Organizations with mature security processes utilize automated remediation to improve the security posture by reducing the time it takes to respond to security events. This allows the usually over burdened Security Operations Center (SOC) teams to avoid alert fatigue.

Automated Security Remediation using Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Splunk

Chrome integrates with Chrome Enterprise Recommended partners such as Splunk® using Chrome Enterprise Connectors to report security events such as malware transfer, unsafe site visits, password reuse. Other supported events can be found on our support page.

The Splunk integration with Chrome browser allows organizations to collect, analyze, and extract insights from security events. The extended security insights into managed browsers will enable SOC teams to perform better informed automated security remediations using Splunk® Alert Actions.

Splunk Alert Actions are a great capability for automating security remediation tasks. By creating alert actions, enterprises can automate the process of identifying, prioritizing, and remediating security threats.

In Splunk®, SOC teams can use alerts to monitor for and respond to specific Chrome Browser Cloud Management events. Alerts use a saved search to look for events in real time or on a schedule and can trigger an Alert Action when search results meet specific conditions as outlined in the diagram below.

Use Case

If a user downloads a malicious file after bypassing a Chrome “Dangerous File” message their managed browser/managed CrOS device should be quarantined.

Prerequisites

• Create a Chrome Browser Cloud Management account at no additional costs
• Splunk® Enterprise v9.0.* or Splunk® Cloud Platform (Cost: Please refer to Splunk’s website)
• Understanding of the Splunk alerting workflow
• Understanding of how to create custom alert actions in Splunk®.

Setup

1. Install the Google Chrome Add-on for Splunk App

   Please follow installation instructions here depending on your Splunk Installation to install the Google Chrome Add-on for Splunk App.

2. Setting up Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Splunk Integration

   Please follow the guide here to set up Chrome Browser Cloud Management and Splunk® integration.

3. Setting up Chrome Browser Cloud Management API access

   To call the Chrome Browser Cloud Management API, use a service account properly configured in the Google admin console. Create a (or use an existing) service account and download the JSON representation of the key.

   Create a (or use an existing) role in the admin console with all the “Chrome Management” privileges as shown below.

   

   Assign the created role to the service account using the “Assign service accounts” button.
   

   
4. Setting up Chrome Browser Cloud Management App in Splunk®

   Install the App i.e. Alert Action from our Github page. You will notice that the Splunk App uses the below directory structure. Please take some time to understand the directory structure layout.

   
5. Setting up a Quarantine OU in Chrome Browser Cloud Management

   Create a “Quarantine” OU to move managed browsers into. Apply restrictive policies to this OU which will then be applied to managed browsers and managed CrOS devices that are moved to this OU. In our case we set the below policies for our “Quarantine” OU called Investigate.These policies ensure that the quarantined CrOS device/browser can only open a limited set of approved URLS.

   • URL Blocklist - Block access to all URLs
   • URL Allowlist - Allow only approved URLs for e.g. IT Helpdesk website
   • New Tab Page Location - Set New tab page URL to an internal website asking the user to contact IT Helpdesk.
   • Home Page is New Tab Page - Use the New Tab page as the user's homepage.

Configuration

1. Start with a search for the Chrome Browser Cloud Management events in the Google Chrome Add-on for Splunk App. For our instance we used the below search query to search for known malicious file download events.

2. Save the search as an alert. The alert uses the saved search to check for events. Adjust the alert type to configure how often the search runs. Use a scheduled alert to check for events on a regular basis. Use a real-time alert to monitor for events continuously. An alert does not have to trigger every time it generates search results. Set trigger conditions to manage when the alert triggers. Customize the alert settings as per enterprise security policies. For our example we used a real time alert with a per-result trigger. The setup we used is as shown below.



As seen in the screenshot we have configured the Chrome Browser Cloud Management Remediation Alert Action App with

• The OU Path of the Quarantine OU i.e. /Investigate
• The Customer Id of the workspace domain
• Service Account Key JSON value

Test the setup

Use the testsafebrowsing website to generate sample security events to test the setup.

1. Open the testsafebrowsing website
2. Click the link for line item 4 under the Desktop Download Warnings section i.e. “Should show an "uncommon" warning, for .exe”
3. You will see a Dangerous Download blocked warning giving you two options to either Discard or Keep the downloaded file. Click on Keep
4. This will trigger the alert action and move your managed browser or managed CrOS device to the “Quarantine” OU (OU name Investigate in our example) with restricted policies.

Conclusion

Security remediation is vital to any organization’s security program. In this blog we discussed configuring automated security remediation of Chrome Browser Cloud Management security events using Splunk alert actions. This scalable approach can be used to protect a company from online security threats by detecting and quickly responding to high fidelity Chrome Browser Cloud Management security events thereby greatly reducing the time to respond.

Our team will be at the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit in National Harbor, MD, next week. Come see us in action if you’re attending the summit.

It’s Google CTF time! Get your hacking toolbox ready and prepare your caffeine for rapid intake. The competition kicks off on June 23 2023 6:00 PM UTC and runs through June 25 2023 6:00 PM UTC. Registration is now open at g.co/ctf.

Google CTF gives you a chance to challenge your skillz, show off your hacktastic abilities, and learn some new tricks along the way. It consists of a set of computer security puzzles (or challenges) involving reverse-engineering, memory corruption, cryptography, web technologies, and more. Use obscure security knowledge to find exploits through bugs and creative misuse. With each completed challenge your team will earn points and move up through the ranks. 

The top 8 teams will qualify for our Hackceler8 competition taking place in Tokyo later this year. Hackceler8 is our experimental esport-style hacking game, custom-made to mix CTF and speedrunning. In the competition, teams need to find clever ways to abuse the game features to capture flags as quickly as possible. See the 2022 highlight reel to get a sense of what it’s like. The prize pool for this year’s event stands at more than $32,000!

Screenshot from Hackeler8 2022 speedrun competition

Itching to get started early? Want to learn more, or get a leg up on the competition? Review challenges from previous years, including previous Hackceler8 matches, all open sourced on GitHub

. Or gain inspiration by binge watching hours of Hackceler8 2020 videos!

If you are just starting out in this space, check out last year’s event H4CK1NG GOOGLE! It’s a great way to get acquainted with security. You can also get ready for this year’s Beginner’s Quest that’ll be launching later this summer which will be in the theme of Computer History, so get ready for some technology archaeology.

Whether you’re a seasoned CTF player or just curious about cyber security and ethical hacking, we want you to join us. Sign up to expand your skill set, meet new friends in the security community, and even watch the pros in action. For the latest announcements, see g.co/ctf, subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Twitter @GoogleVRP. Interested in bug hunting for Google? Check out bughunters.google.com. See you there!