"description":"Many mobile devices are configured to only allow applications to be installed from the mainstream vendor app stores (e.g., Apple App Store and Google Play Store). An adversary can submit multiple code samples to these stores deliberately designed to probe the stores' security analysis capabilities, with the goal of determining effective techniques to place malicious applications in the stores that could then be delivered to targeted devices. (Citation: Android Bouncer) (Citation: Adventures in BouncerLand) (Citation: Jekyll on iOS) (Citation: Fruit vs Zombies)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: The app store operators (e.g., Apple and Google) may detect the attempts, but it would not be observable to those being attacked.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: An adversary can submit code remotely using throwaway accounts, although a registration fee may need to be paid for each new account (e.g., $99 for Apple and $25 for Google Play Store).",
"value":"Test ability to evade automated mobile application security analysis performed by app stores - PRE-T1170",
"description":"Obfuscation is hiding the day-to-day building and testing of new tools, chat servers, etc. (Citation: FireEyeAPT17)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will generally not have visibility into their infrastructure.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Building and testing infrastructure and obfuscating it to protect it against intrusions are a standard part of the adversary process in preparing to conduct an operation against a target.",
"description":"Backup infrastructure allows an adversary to recover from environmental and system failures. It also facilitates recovery or movement to other infrastructure if the primary infrastructure is discovered or otherwise is no longer viable. (Citation: LUCKYCAT2012)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Infrastructure is (typically) outside of control/visibility of defender and as such as tools are staged for specific campaigns, it will not be obvious to those being attacked.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The adversary has control of the infrastructure and will likely be able to add/remove tools to infrastructure, whether acquired via hacking or standard computer acquisition (e.g., [https://aws.amazon.com AWS], commercial storage solutions).",
"description":"An adversary may assess a target's operational security (OPSEC) practices in order to identify targeting options. A target may share different information in different settings or be more of less cautious in different environments. (Citation: Scasny2015) (Citation: EverstineAirStrikes)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender does not have access to information stored outside of defenders scope or visibility (e.g., log data for Facebook is not easily accessible). Defender has very infrequent visibility into an adversary's more detailed TTPs for developing people targets.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Information is out in the open for items that are available - part of this is ease of use for consumers to support the expected networking use case. OSINT can provide many avenues to gather intel which contain weaknesses. Developing and refining the methodology to exploit weak human targets has been done for years (e.g., spies).",
"description":"Analysts may receive intelligence requirements from leadership and begin research process to satisfy a requirement. Part of this process may include delineating between needs and wants and thinking through all the possible aspects associating with satisfying a requirement. (Citation: FBIIntelligencePrimer)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"An adversary will require some physical hardware and software. They may only need a lightweight set-up if most of their activities will take place using on-line infrastructure. Or, they may need to build extensive infrastructure if they want to test, communicate, and control other aspects of their activities on their own systems. (Citation: NYTStuxnet)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Outside of highly specific or rare HW, nearly impossible to detect and track.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Ease and availability of current hardware and software, mobile phones (cash and go phones), and additional online technology simplifies adversary process to achieve this technique (and possibly without traceability). The adversary has control of the infrastructure and will likely be able to add/remove tools to infrastructure, whether acquired via hacking or standard computer acquisition (e.g., [https://aws.amazon.com AWS], VPS).",
"value":"Procure required equipment and software - PRE-T1112",
"description":"Security defensive capabilities are designed to stop or limit unauthorized network traffic or other types of accesses. (Citation: OSFingerprinting2014) (Citation: NMAP WAF NSE)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Technically, the defender has the ability to detect. However, this is typically not performed as this type of traffic would likely not prompt the defender to take any actionable defense. In addition, this would require the defender to closely review their access logs for any suspicious activity (if the activity is even logged).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The adversary will have some insight into defenses based on dropped traffic or filtered responses. It is more difficult to pinpoint which defenses are implemented (e.g., [https://www.fireeye.com FireEye] WMPS, [https://www.hpe.com Hewlett Packard Enterprise] Tipping Point IPS).",
"description":"Leadership or key decision makers may derive specific intelligence requirements from Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) or Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs). Specific intelligence requirements assist analysts in gathering information to establish a baseline of information about a topic or question and collection managers to clarify the types of information that should be collected to satisfy the requirement. (Citation: LowenthalCh4) (Citation: Heffter)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"The use of algorithms in malware to periodically generate a large number of domain names which function as rendezvous points for malware command and control servers. (Citation: DamballaDGA) (Citation: DambballaDGACyberCriminals)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: It is possible to detect the use of DGAs; however, defenders have largely not been successful at mitigating the domains because they are generally registered less than an hour before they are used and disposed of within 24 hours.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This technique does not require a significant amount of sophistication while still being highly effective. It was popularized by the Conficker worms but is prevalent in crimeware such as Murofet and BankPatch.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nThe utilization of resources not owned by the adversary to launch exploits or operations. This includes utilizing equipment that was previously compromised or leveraging access gained by other methods (such as compromising an employee at a business partner location). (Citation: CitizenLabGreatCannon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: While possible to detect, it requires a broader vantage point than is typical that provides increased insight and conducts extensive data analysis and correlation between events.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Conducting technique requires either nation-state level capabilities or large amounts of financing to coordinate multiple 3rd party resources to gain desired insight.",
"value":"Leverage compromised 3rd party resources - PRE-T1152",
"description":"Execution of code and network communications often result in logging or other system or network forensic artifacts. An adversary can run their code to identify what is recorded under different conditions. This may result in changes to their code or adding additional actions (such as deleting a record from a log) to the code. (Citation: EDB-39007) (Citation: infosec-covering-tracks)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary controls the test and defender likely has no visibility.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary has full control of environment to determine what level of auditing and traces exist on a system after execution.",
"value":"Review logs and residual traces - PRE-T1135",
"description":"Job postings, on either company sites, or in other forums, provide information on organizational structure and often provide contact information for someone within the organization. This may give an adversary information on technologies within the organization which could be valuable in attack or provide insight in to possible security weaknesses or limitations in detection or protection mechanisms. (Citation: JobPostingThreat)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Impossible to differentiate between an adversary and a normal user when accessing open/public information.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Publicly posted information by design. Providing too much detail in the job posting could aid the adversary in learning more about the target's environment and possible technical weaknesses/deficiencies.",
"value":"Identify job postings and needs/gaps - PRE-T1025",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nEmails with malicious attachments are designed to get a user to open/execute the attachment in order to deliver malware payloads. (Citation: APT1)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Many technologies exist to scan content and/or emulate a workstation prior to the target receiving and executing the attachment (detonation chambers) in order to reduce malicious emails and attachments being delivered to the intended target. However, encryption continues to be a stumbling block. In addition, there are a variety of commercial technologies available that enable users to screen for phishing messages and which are designed to enhance email security.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Sending the emails is the simple part, ensuring they make it to the target (e.g., not being filtered) may be challenging. Over time, an adversary refines their techniques to minimize detection by making their emails seem legitimate in structure and content.",
"value":"Spear phishing messages with malicious attachments - PRE-T1144",
"description":"Fake certificates can be acquired by legal process or coercion. Or, an adversary can trick a Certificate Authority into issuing a certificate. These fake certificates can be used as a part of Man-in-the-Middle attacks. (Citation: SubvertSSL)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: The certificate authority who is hacked cannot easily see they've been compromised, but [https://www.google.com Google] has caught on to this occurring in previous attacks such as DigiNotar (Citation: DigiNotar2016) and [https://www.verisign.com Verisign].\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: One example of it occurring in the real world is the DigiNotar (Citation: DigiNotar2016) case. To be able to do this usually requires sophisticated skills and is traditionally done by a nation state to spy on its citizens.",
"value":"SSL certificate acquisition for trust breaking - PRE-T1115",
"description":"Proxies act as an intermediary for clients seeking resources from other systems. Using a proxy may make it more difficult to track back the origin of a network communication. (Citation: APT1)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defenders with standard capabilities will traditionally be able to see the first hop but not all the subsequent earlier hops an adversary takes to be able to conduct reconnaissance.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Proxies are readily available for the adversary with both free and cost-based options available.",
"description":"Domain Names are the human readable names used to represent one or more IP addresses. IP addresses are the unique identifier of computing devices on a network. Both pieces of information are valuable to an adversary who is looking to understand the structure of a network. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public or easily obtainable information by design.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: AS and IANA data are easily available, existing research tools.",
"value":"Determine domain and IP address space - PRE-T1027",
"description":"A remote access tool (RAT) is a piece of software that allows a remote user to control a system as if they had physical access to that system. An adversary may utilize existing RATs, modify existing RATs, or create their own RAT. (Citation: ActiveMalwareEnergy)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary will likely use code repositories, but development will be performed on their local systems.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Many successful RATs exist for re-use/tailoring in addition to those an adversary may choose to build from scratch. The adversary's capabilities, target sensitivity, and needs will likely determine whether a previous RAT is modified for use a new one is built from scratch.",
"value":"Remote access tool development - PRE-T1128",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nA technique to push an [https://www.apple.com/ios iOS] or [https://www.android.com Android] MMS-type message to the target which does not require interaction on the part of the target to be successful. (Citation: BlackHat Stagefright) (Citation: WikiStagefright)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: For non-corporate cellular devices not joined to the corporate network, it is not possible to detect an adversary's use of the technique because messages traverse networks outside of the control of the employer. For corporate cellular devices which are joined to the corporate network, monitoring of messages and ability to patch against push attacks is possible, assuming they are fully monitored.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Easily executed technique to push an MMS-type message to the target which does not require interaction on the part of the target to be successful.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nClicking on links in email, opening attachments, or visiting websites that result in drive by downloads can all result in compromise due to users performing actions of a cyber nature. (Citation: AnonHBGary)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Some environments have anti-spearphishing mechanisms to detect or block the link before it reaches the user.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Users unwittingly click on spearphishing links frequently, despite training designed to educate about the perils of spearphishing.",
"value":"Authorized user performs requested cyber action - PRE-T1163",
"description":"Once they have been created, intelligence requirements, Key Intelligence Topics (KITs), and Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs) are submitted into a central management system. (Citation: ICD204) (Citation: KIT-Herring)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"value":"Submit KITs, KIQs, and intelligence requirements - PRE-T1014",
"description":"The use of credentials by an adversary with the intent to hide their true identity and/or portray them self as another person or entity. An adversary may use misattributable credentials in an attack to convince a victim that credentials are legitimate and trustworthy when this is not actually the case. (Citation: FakeSSLCerts)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: If a previous incident identified the credentials used by an adversary, defenders can potentially use these credentials to track the adversary through reuse of the same credentials.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: An adversary can easily create and use misattributable credentials to obtain servers, build environment, [https://aws.amazon.com AWS] accounts, etc. Many service providers require some form of identifiable information such as a phone number or email address, but there are several avenues to acquire these consistent with the misattributable identity.",
"description":"Strategic plans outline the mission, vision, and goals for an adversary at a high level in relation to the key partners, topics, and functions the adversary carries out. (Citation: KPMGChina5Year) (Citation: China5YearPlans) (Citation: ChinaUN)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Once a 3rd party vendor has been identified as being of interest it can be probed for vulnerabilities just like the main target would be. (Citation: Zetter2015Threats) (Citation: WSJTargetBreach)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: 3rd parties would most likely not report network scans to their partners. Target network would not know that their 3rd party partners were being used as a vector.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The difficult part is enumerating all 3rd parties. Finding major partners would not be difficult. Significantly easier with insider knowledge. Vulnerability scanning the 3rd party networks is trivial.",
"value":"Assess vulnerability of 3rd party vendors - PRE-T1075",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nAttempt to use default vendor credentials, brute force credentials, or previously obtained legitimate credentials to authenticate remotely. This access could be to a web portal, through a VPN, or in a phone app. (Citation: Remote Access Healthcare) (Citation: RDP Point of Sale)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This is possible with diligent monitoring of login anomalies, expected user behavior/location. If the adversary uses legitimate credentials, it may go undetected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Attempt to use default vendor credentials, brute force credentials, or previously obtained legitimate credentials. This is increasingly difficult to obtain access when two-factor authentication mechanisms are employed.",
"description":"Domain Registration Hijacking is the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of the original registrant. (Citation: ICANNDomainNameHijacking)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Generally not easily detectable unless domain registrar provides alerting on any updates.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires adversary to gain access to an email account for person listed as the domain registrar/POC. The adversary can then claim that they forgot their password in order to make changes to the domain registration. Other possibilities include social engineering a domain registration help desk to gain access to an account or take advantage of renewal process gaps.",
"description":"Analyze strengths and weaknesses of the target for potential areas of where to focus compromise efforts. (Citation: FakeLinkedIn)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This can be done offline after the data has been collected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Analyze strengths and weaknesses of the target for potential areas of where to focus compromise efforts.",
"value":"Analyze organizational skillsets and deficiencies - PRE-T1077",
"description":"Active scanning is the act of sending transmissions to end nodes, and analyzing the responses, in order to identify information about the communications system. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This technique is an expected and voluminous activity when on the Internet. Active scanning techniques/tools typically generate benign traffic that does not require further investigation by a defender since there is no actionable defense to execute. The high volume of this activity makes it burdensome for any defender to chase and therefore often ignored.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Various available tools and data sources for scouting and detecting address, routing, version numbers, patch levels, protocols/services running, etc.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nA technique used to compromise victims wherein the victims visit a compromised website that redirects their browser to a malicious web site, such as an exploit kit's landing page. The exploit kit landing page will probe the victim's operating system, web browser, or other software to find an exploitable vulnerability to infect the victim. (Citation: GeorgeDriveBy) (Citation: BellDriveBy)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: With the use of malware detonation chambers (e.g., for web or email traffic), this improves detection. Encryption and other techniques reduces the efficacy of these defenses.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Placing an exploit on a public web site for driveby types of delivery is not impossible. However, gaining access to a web site with high enough traffic to meet specific objectives could be the challenge.",
"description":"An adversary can test the detections of malicious emails or files by using publicly available services, such as virus total, to see if their files or emails cause an alert. They can also use similar services that are not openly available and don't publicly publish results or they can test on their own internal infrastructure. (Citation: WiredVirusTotal)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: If using a common service like [https://www.virustotal.com VirusTotal], it is possible to detect. If the adversary uses a hostile, less well-known service, the defender would not be aware.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Easy to automate upload/email of a wide range of data packages.",
"description":"A technique in which a fully qualified domain name has multiple IP addresses assigned to it which are swapped with extreme frequency, using a combination of round robin IP address and short Time-To-Live (TTL) for a DNS resource record. (Citation: HoneynetFastFlux) (Citation: MisnomerFastFlux) (Citation: MehtaFastFluxPt1) (Citation: MehtaFastFluxPt2)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: In general, detecting usage of fast flux DNS is difficult due to web traffic load balancing that services client requests quickly. In single flux cases only IP addresses change for static domain names. In double flux cases, nothing is static. Defenders such as IPS, domain registrars, and service providers are likely in the best position for detection.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Fast flux is generally simple for an adversary to set up and offers several advantages. Such advantages include limited audit trails for defenders to find, ease of operation for an adversary to maintain, and support for main nodes.",
"description":"Social Engineering is the practice of manipulating people in order to get them to divulge information or take an action. (Citation: SEAttackVectors) (Citation: BeachSE2003)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: No technical means to detect an adversary collecting technical information about a target. Any detection would be based upon strong OPSEC policy implementation.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Very effective technique for the adversary that does not require any formal training and relies upon finding just one person who exhibits poor judgement.",
"description":"A wide variety of cloud, virtual private services, hosting, compute, and storage solutions are available. Additionally botnets are available for rent or purchase. Use of these solutions allow an adversary to stage, launch, and execute an attack from infrastructure that does not physically tie back to them and can be rapidly provisioned, modified, and shut down. (Citation: TrendmicroHideoutsLease)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Hard to differentiate from standard business operations.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Wide variety of cloud/VPS/hosting/compute/storage solutions available for adversary to acquire freely or at a low cost.",
"value":"Acquire and/or use 3rd party infrastructure services - PRE-T1106",
"description":"Obfuscation is the act of creating code that is more difficult to understand. Encoding transforms the code using a publicly available format. Encryption transforms the code such that it requires a key to reverse the encryption. (Citation: CylanceOpCleaver)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Detecting encryption is easy, decrypting/deobfuscating is hard.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Various solutions exist for the adversary to use. This technique is commonly used to prevent attribution and evade detection.",
"description":"Understanding organizational skillsets and deficiencies could provide insight in to weakness in defenses, or opportunities for exploitation. (Citation: FakeLinkedIn)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: No access to who is consuming the job postings to know what is being observed.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Job postings have to be made public for contractors and many times have the name of the organization being supported.",
"value":"Analyze organizational skillsets and deficiencies - PRE-T1074",
"description":"An adversary could distribute malicious software development tools (e.g., compiler) that hide malicious behavior in software built using the tools. (Citation: PA XcodeGhost) (Citation: Reflections on Trusting Trust)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Developers could check a hash or signature of their development tools to ensure that they match expected values (e.g., Apple provides instructions of how to do so for its Xcode developer tool), but developers may not always do so.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The adversary would need to either replace the tools provided at the official download location or influence developers to download the tools from an adversary-controlled third-party download location. Desktop operating systems (e.g., Windows, macOS) are increasingly encouraging use of vendor-provided official app stores to distribute software, which utilize code signing and increase the difficulty of replacing development tools with malicious versions.",
"value":"Distribute malicious software development tools - PRE-T1171",
"description":"Code signing is the process of digitally signing executables and scripts to confirm the software author and guarantee that the code has not been altered or corrupted. Users may trust a signed piece of code more than an signed piece of code even if they don't know who issued the certificate or who the author is. (Citation: DiginotarCompromise)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not know what certificates an adversary acquires from a 3rd party. Defender will not know prior to public disclosure if a 3rd party has had their certificate compromised.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: It is trivial to purchase code signing certificates within an organization; many exist and are available at reasonable cost. It is complex to factor or steal 3rd party code signing certificates for use in malicious mechanisms",
"value":"Acquire or compromise 3rd party signing certificates - PRE-T1109",
"description":"Both newly built personas and pre-compromised personas may require development of additional documentation to make them seem real. This could include filling out profile information, developing social networks, or incorporating photos. (Citation: NEWSCASTER2014) (Citation: BlackHatRobinSage) (Citation: RobinSageInterview)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Unless there is some threat intelligence reporting, these users are hard to differentiate.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The only difference between an adversary conducting this technique and a typical user, is the adversary's intent - to target an individual for compromise.",
"value":"Develop social network persona digital footprint - PRE-T1119",
"description":"A technique used by the adversary similar to Dynamic DNS with the exception that the use of multiple DNS infrastructures likely have whois records. (Citation: KrebsStLouisFed)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This is by design captured in public registration logs. Various tools and services exist to track/query/monitor domain name registration information. However, tracking multiple DNS infrastructures will likely require multiple tools/services or more advanced analytics.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires more planning, but feasible.",
"value":"Use multiple DNS infrastructures - PRE-T1104",
"description":"Many applications use third-party software libraries, often without full knowledge of the behavior of the libraries by the application developer. For example, mobile applications often incorporate advertising libraries to generate revenue for the application developer. Vulnerabilities in these third-party libraries could potentially be exploited in any application that uses the library, and even if the vulnerabilities are fixed, many applications may still use older, vulnerable versions of the library. (Citation: Flexera News Vulnerabilities) (Citation: Android Security Review 2015) (Citation: Android Multidex RCE)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Open source software has great appeal mostly due to the time savings and that it is free. However, using this code without assessing it's security is akin to blindly executing third party software. Companies often do not dedicate the time to appropriately detect and scan for vulnerabilities. The mainstream mobile application stores scan applications for some known vulnerabilities. For example, Google's Android Application Security Improvement Program identifies and alerts developers to vulnerabilities present in their applications from use of the Vungle, Apache Cordova, WebView SSL, GnuTLS, and Vitamio third-party libraries. However, these scans are not likely to cover all vulnerable libraries, developers may not always act on the results, and the results may not be made available to impacted end users of the applications.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Developers commonly use open source libraries such that where an adversary can easily discover known vulnerabilities and create exploits. It is also generally easy to decompile arbitrary mobile applications to determine what libraries they use, and similarly use this information to correlate against known CVEs and exploit packages.",
"value":"Identify vulnerabilities in third-party software libraries - PRE-T1166",
"description":"DNS Calc is a technique in which the octets of an IP address are used to calculate the port for command and control servers from an initial DNS request. (Citation: CrowdstrikeNumberedPanda) (Citation: FireEyeDarwinsAPTGroup) (Citation: Rapid7G20Espionage)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: There are not currently available tools that provide the ability to conduct this calculation to detect this type of activity.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This technique assists the adversary in bypassing egress filtering designed to prevent unauthorized communication. It has been used by APT12, but not otherwise widely reported. Some botnets are hardcoded to be able to use this technique.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nExternally facing systems allow connections from outside the network as a normal course of operations. Externally facing systems may include, but are not limited to, websites, web portals, email, DNS, FTP, VPN concentrators, and boarder routers and firewalls. These systems could be in a demilitarized zone (DMZ) or may be within other parts of the internal environment. (Citation: CylanceOpCleaver) (Citation: DailyTechAntiSec)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Most DMZs are monitored but are also designed so that if they are compromised, the damage/risk is limited.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: DMZ environments are specifically designed to be isolated because one assumes they will ultimately be compromised by the adversary.",
"value":"Compromise of externally facing system - PRE-T1165",
"description":"Supply chains include the people, processes, and technologies used to move a product or service from a supplier to a consumer. Understanding supply chains may provide an adversary with opportunities to exploit the technology or interconnections that are part of the supply chain. (Citation: SmithSupplyChain) (Citation: CERT-UKSupplyChain) (Citation: RSA-supply-chain)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Difficult, if not impossible to detect, because the adversary may collect this information from external sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Supply chain diversity of sourcing increases adversary difficulty with accurate mapping. Industry practice has moved towards agile sourcing.",
"description":"Dumpster diving is looking through waste for information on technology, people, and/or organizational items of interest. (Citation: FriedDumpsters)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Strong physical security and monitoring will detect this behavior if performed on premises.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Not difficult if waste is placed in an unsecured or minimally secured area before collection.",
"description":"For a computing resource to be accessible to the public, domain names and IP addresses must be registered with an authorized organization. (Citation: Google Domains WHOIS) (Citation: FunAndSun2012) (Citation: Scasny2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Open access to DNS registration/routing information is inherent in Internet architecture.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Proliferation of DNS information makes registration information functionally freely available.",
"value":"Obtain domain/IP registration information - PRE-T1028",
"description":"Business relationship information may be used by an adversary to shape social engineering attempts (exploiting who a target expects to hear from) or to plan for technical actions such as exploiting network trust relationship. (Citation: 11StepsAttackers)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Exception to the rule is if the adversary tips off the target that others have been asking about the relationship with them.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires an intensive process. In some industries, business relationships may be public in order to generate business, but this is not the case for all industries and all relationships.",
"value":"Identify business relationships - PRE-T1060",
"description":"Anonymity services reduce the amount of information available that can be used to track an adversary's activities. Multiple options are available to hide activity, limit tracking, and increase anonymity. (Citation: TOR Design) (Citation: Stratfor2012)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Depends on service. Some are easy to detect, but are hard to trace (e.g., [https://torproject.org TOR]).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Easy access to anonymizers, quasi-anonymous services like remailers, [https://torproject.org TOR], relays, burner phones, etc.",
"description":"Command and Control (C2 or C&C) is a method by which the adversary communicates with malware. An adversary may use a variety of protocols and methods to execute C2 such as a centralized server, peer to peer, IRC, compromised web sites, or even social media. (Citation: HAMMERTOSS2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary will likely use code repositories, but development will be performed on their local systems.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: C2 over commonly used and permitted protocols provides the necessary cover and access.",
"description":"For attacks incorporating social engineering the utilization of an on-line persona is important. These personas may be fictitious or impersonate real people. The persona may exist on a single site or across multiple sites ([https://www.facebook.com Facebook], [https://www.linkedin.com LinkedIn], [https://twitter.com Twitter], [https://plus.google.com Google+], etc.). (Citation: NEWSCASTER2014) (Citation: BlackHatRobinSage) (Citation: RobinSageInterview)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Unless there is some threat intelligence reporting, these users are hard to differentiate.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Performing activities like typical users, but with specific intent in mind.",
"value":"Build social network persona - PRE-T1118",
"description":"Once divided into the most granular parts, analysts work with collection managers to task the collection management system with requirements and sub-requirements. (Citation: Heffter) (Citation: JP2-01)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nSpearphishing for information is a specific variant of spearphishing. Spearphishing for information is different from other forms of spearphishing in that it it doesn't leverage malicious code. All forms of spearphishing are elctronically delivered social engineering targeted at a specific individual, company, or industry. Spearphishing for information is an attempt to trick targets into divulging information, frequently credentials, without involving malicious code. Spearphishing for information frequently involves masquerading as a source with a reason to collect information (such as a system administrator or a bank) and providing a user with a website link to visit. The given website often closely resembles a legitimate site in appearance and has a URL containing elements from the real site. From the fake website, information is gathered in web forms and sent to the attacker. Spearphishing for information may also try to obtain information directly through the exchange of emails, instant messengers or other electronic conversation means. (Citation: ATTACKREF GRIZZLY STEPPE JAR)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Depending on the specific method of phishing, the detections can vary. For emails, filtering based on DKIP+SPF or header analysis can help detect when the email sender is spoofed. When it comes to following links, network intrusion detection systems (NIDS), firewalls, removing links, exploding shortened links, proxy monitoring, blocking uncategorized sites, and site reputation based filtering can all provide detection opportunities.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Sending emails is trivial, and, over time, an adversary can refine their technique to minimize detection by making their emails seem legitimate in structure and content.",
"value":"Spearphishing for Information - PRE-T1174",
"description":"Domain Names are the human readable names used to represent one or more IP addresses. They can be purchased or, in some cases, acquired for free. (Citation: PWCSofacy2014)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This is by design captured in public registration logs. Various tools and services exist to track/query/monitor domain name registration information.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Proliferation of DNS TLDs and registrars. Adversary may choose domains that are similar to legitimate domains (aka \"domain typosquatting\" or homoglyphs).",
"description":"Technology usage patterns include identifying if users work offsite, connect remotely, or other possibly less restricted/secured access techniques. (Citation: SANSRemoteAccess)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Physical observations, OSINT for remote access instructions, and other techniques are not detectable.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Determine if users work offsite, connect remotely, or other possibly less restricted/secured access techniques.",
"description":"Business relationship information includes the associates of a target and may be discovered via social media sites such as [https://www.linkedin.com LinkedIn] or public press releases announcing new partnerships between organizations or people (such as key hire announcements in industry articles). This information may be used by an adversary to shape social engineering attempts (exploiting who a target expects to hear from) or to plan for technical actions such as exploiting network trust relationship. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon) (Citation: Scasny2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender. Much of this information is widely known and difficult to obscure.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Made easier by today's current social media.",
"value":"Identify business relationships - PRE-T1049",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nMany mobile devices are configured to only allow applications to be installed from the mainstream vendor app stores (e.g., Apple App Store and Google Play Store). These app stores scan submitted applications for malicious behavior. However, applications can evade these scans by downloading and executing new code at runtime that was not included in the original application package. (Citation: Fruit vs Zombies) (Citation: Android Hax) (Citation: Execute This!) (Citation: HT Fake News App) (Citation: Anywhere Computing kill 2FA) (Citation: Android Security Review 2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Third-party mobile application security analysis services exist that scan for use of these techniques in iOS and Android applications. Additionally, Google specifically calls out the ability to \"identify attacks that require connection to a server and dynamic downloading of code\" in its Android Security 2015 Year in Review report. However, many applications use these techniques as part of their legitimate operation, increasing the difficulty of detecting or preventing malicious use.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Runtime code execution techniques and examples of their use are widely documented on both Apple iOS and Android.",
"value":"Runtime code download and execution - PRE-T1172",
"description":"Analysts assess current information available against requirements that outline needs and wants as part of the research baselining process to begin satisfying a requirement. (Citation: CyberAdvertisingChar) (Citation: CIATradecraft) (Citation: ForensicAdversaryModeling) (Citation: CyberAdversaryBehavior)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"value":"Assess current holdings, needs, and wants - PRE-T1013",
"description":"Templates and branding materials may be used by an adversary to add authenticity to social engineering message. (Citation: Scasny2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary may download templates or branding from publicly available presentations that the defender can't monitor.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Some branding information is publicly available when a corporation publishes their briefings to the internet which provides insight into branding information and template materials. An exhaustive list of templating and branding is likely not available on the internet.",
"description":"Dynamic DNS is a method of automatically updating a name in the DNS system. Providers offer this rapid reconfiguration of IPs to hostnames as a service. (Citation: DellMirage2012)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not know at first use what is valid or hostile traffic without more context. It is possible, however, for defenders to see if the PTR record for an address is hosted by a known DDNS provider. There is potential to assign some level of risk based on this.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Flexible and re-configurable command and control servers, along with deniable ownership and reduced cost of ownership.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nEmails with malicious links are designed to get a user to click on the link in order to deliver malware payloads. (Citation: GoogleDrive Phishing) (Citation: RSASEThreat)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defenders can implement mechanisms to analyze links and identify levels of concerns. However, the adversary has the advantage of creating new links or finding ways to obfuscate the link so that common detection lists can not identify it. Detection of a malicious link could be identified once the file has been downloaded.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Sending emails is trivial and expected. The adversary needs to ensure links don't get tampered, removed, or flagged as a previously black-listed site.",
"value":"Spear phishing messages with malicious links - PRE-T1146",
"description":"During production and distribution, the placement of software, firmware, or a CPU chip in a computer, handheld, or other electronic device that enables an adversary to gain illegal entrance. (Citation: McDRecall) (Citation: SeagateMaxtor)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: The number of elements and components in a supply chain of HW or SW is vast and detecting an implant is complex for SW, but more complex for HW.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Access to the supply chain by an adversary can be a challenging endeavor, depending on what element is attempting to be subverted.",
"value":"Hardware or software supply chain implant - PRE-T1142",
"description":"The secondary level tactical element the adversary seeks to attack is the specific network or area of a network that is vulnerable to attack. Within the corporate network example, the secondary level tactical element might be a SQL server or a domain controller with a known vulnerability. (Citation: CyberAdversaryBehavior) (Citation: JP3-60) (Citation: JP3-12 (R)) (Citation: DoD Cyber 2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. May change for special use cases or adversary and defender overlays.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This is the normal adversary targeting cycle where they utilize our poor OPSEC practices to their advantage.",
"value":"Determine secondary level tactical element - PRE-T1021",
"description":"An adversary may stage software and tools for use during later stages of an attack. The software and tools may be placed on systems legitimately in use by the adversary or may be placed on previously compromised infrastructure. (Citation: APT1) (Citation: RedOctober)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Infrastructure is (typically) outside of control/visibility of defender and as such as tools are staged for specific campaigns, it will not be observable to those being attacked.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary has control of the infrastructure and will likely be able to add/remove tools to infrastructure, whether acquired via hacking or standard computer acquisition (e.g., [https://aws.amazon.com AWS], VPS providers).",
"value":"Upload, install, and configure software/tools - PRE-T1139",
"description":"Leadership organizes Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) and Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs) into three types of categories and creates more if necessary. An example of a description of key players KIT would be when an adversary assesses the cyber defensive capabilities of a nation-state threat actor. (Citation: Herring1999)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"value":"Assign KITs/KIQs into categories - PRE-T1005",
"description":"An adversary can probe a victim's network to determine configurations. The configurations may provide opportunities to route traffic through the network in an undetected or less detectable way. (Citation: Li2014ExploitKits) (Citation: RecurlyGHOST)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This can be done offline after the data has been collected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Analyze technical scanning results to identify weaknesses in the configuration or architecture. Many of the common tools highlight these weakness automatically (e.g., software security scanning tools or published vulnerabilities about commonly used libraries).",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nSending messages through social media platforms to individuals identified as a target. These messages may include malicious attachments or links to malicious sites or they may be designed to establish communications for future actions. (Citation: APT1) (Citation: Nemucod Facebook)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Extremely hard to identify (in the launch phase) what message via social media is hostile versus what is not. Increased use of encrypted communications increases the difficulty average defender's have in detecting use of this technique.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Sending messages to individuals identified as a target follows normal tradecraft for using social media.",
"value":"Targeted social media phishing - PRE-T1143",
"description":"The adversary can obtain an Apple iOS enterprise distribution key pair and certificate and use it to distribute malicious apps directly to Apple iOS devices without the need to publish the apps to the Apple App Store (where the apps could potentially be detected). (Citation: Apple Developer Enterprise Porgram Apps) (Citation: Fruit vs Zombies) (Citation: WIRELURKER) (Citation: Sideloading Change)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Starting in iOS 9, Apple has changed the user interface when installing apps to better indicate to users the potential implications of installing apps signed by an enterprise distribution key rather than from Apple's App Store and to make it more difficult for users to inadvertently install these apps. Additionally, enterprise management controls are available that can be imposed to prevent installing these apps. Also, enterprise mobility management / mobile device management (EMM/MDM) systems can be used to scan for the presence of undesired apps on enterprise mobile devices.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Apple requires a DUNS number, corporate documentation, and $299 to obtain an enterprise distribution certificate. Additionally, Apple revokes certificates if they discover malicious use. However, the enrollment information could be falsified to Apple by an adversary, or an adversary could steal an existing enterprise distribution certificate (and the corresponding private key) from a business that already possesses one.",
"value":"Obtain Apple iOS enterprise distribution key pair and certificate - PRE-T1169",
"description":"Infrastructure services includes the hardware, software, and network resources required to operate a communications environment. This infrastructure can be managed by a 3rd party rather than being managed by the owning organization. (Citation: FFIECAwareness) (Citation: Zetter2015Threats)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: The data is passive in nature or not controlled by the defender, so it is hard to identify when an adversary is getting or analyzing the data.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Based on what the 3rd party infrastructure is, there are many tell tail signs which indicate it is hosted by a 3rd party, such as ASN data, MX or CNAME pointers or IP addresses",
"value":"Determine 3rd party infrastructure services - PRE-T1037",
"description":"As with legitimate development efforts, different skill sets may be required for different phases of an attack. The skills needed may be located in house, can be developed, or may need to be contracted out. (Citation: APT1)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Recruitment is, by its nature, either clandestine or off the record.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Like target organizations, adversary organizations are competing to identify and hire top technical talent. Training less technical staff is also a viable option.",
"value":"Identify resources required to build capabilities - PRE-T1125",
"description":"A form of social engineering designed build trust and to lay the foundation for future interactions or attacks. (Citation: BlackHatRobinSage)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Users have the ability to detect and report non-authenticated individuals requesting to follow, friend or connect to a target. However the rigidity in validating the users is not typically followed by standard users.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Connecting with \"friends\" is a fundamental requirement for social media - without it, social media is worthless. An adversary can easily create a profile and request targets to validate the requests.",
"value":"Friend/Follow/Connect to targets of interest - PRE-T1141",
"description":"Use of removable media as part of the Launch phase requires an adversary to determine type, format, and content of the media and associated malware. (Citation: BadUSB)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary will likely use code repositories, but development will be performed on their local systems.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Several exploit repositories and tool suites exist for re-use and tailoring.",
"value":"Create infected removable media - PRE-T1132",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nDNS (cache) poisoning is the corruption of an Internet server's domain name system table by replacing an Internet address with that of another, rogue address. When a Web user seeks the page with that address, the request is redirected by the rogue entry in the table to a different address. (Citation: Google DNS Poisoning) (Citation: DNS Poisoning China) (Citation: Mexico Modem DNS Poison)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Tracking multiple DNS infrastructures will likely require multiple tools/services, more advanced analytics, and mature detection/response capabilities in order to be effective. Few defenders demonstrate the mature processes to immediately detect and mitigate against the use of this technique.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary poisons DNS entry to redirect traffic designated for one site to route to an adversary controlled resource.",
"description":"An adversary can attempt to identify web defensive services as [https://www.cloudflare.com/ CloudFlare], [https://github.com/jjxtra/Windows-IP-Ban-Service IPBan], and [https://www.snort.org/ Snort]. This may be done by passively detecting services, like [https://www.cloudflare.com/ CloudFlare] routing, or actively, such as by purposefully tripping security defenses. (Citation: NMAP WAF NSE)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Active service detection may trigger an alert. Passive service enumeration is not detected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary can passively detect services (e.g., [https://www.cloudflare.com/ CloudFlare] routing) or actively detect services (e.g., by purposefully tripping security defenses)",
"value":"Identify web defensive services - PRE-T1033",
"description":"An adversary may analyze technical scanning results to identify weaknesses in the configuration or architecture of a victim network. These weaknesses could include architectural flaws, misconfigurations, or improper security controls. (Citation: FireEyeAPT28)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This can be done offline after the data has been collected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Many of the common tools highlight these weakness automatically.",
"value":"Analyze architecture and configuration posture - PRE-T1065",
"description":"A wide variety of cloud, virtual private services, hosting, compute, and storage solutions are available. Additionally botnets are available for rent or purchase. Use of these solutions allow an adversary to stage, launch, and execute an attack from infrastructure that does not physically tie back to them and can be rapidly provisioned, modified, and shut down. (Citation: LUCKYCAT2012)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: 3rd party services highly leveraged by legitimate services, hard to distinguish from background noise. While an adversary can use their own infrastructure, most know this is a sure- re way to get caught. To add degrees of separation, they can buy or rent from another adversary or accomplice.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Wide range of 3rd party services for hosting, rotating, or moving C2, static data, exploits, exfiltration, etc.",
"value":"Acquire and/or use 3rd party infrastructure services - PRE-T1084",
"description":"The approach or attack vector outlines the specifics behind how the adversary would like to attack the target. As additional information is known through the other phases of PRE-ATT&CK, an adversary may update the approach or attack vector. (Citation: CyberAdversaryBehavior) (Citation: WITCHCOVEN2015) (Citation: JP3-60) (Citation: JP3-12 (R)) (Citation: DoD Cyber 2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. May change for special use cases or adversary and defender overlays.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This is the normal adversary targeting cycle where they utilize our poor OPSEC practices to their advantage.",
"description":"If an adversary can identify which security tools a victim is using they may be able to identify ways around those tools. (Citation: CrowdStrike Putter Panda)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public source external to the defender's organization.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires in-depth research and potentially other intrusions, requires unbounded amount of work to possibly find a return on investment",
"value":"Research visibility gap of security vendors - PRE-T1067",
"description":"Business processes, such as who typically communicates with who, or what the supply chain is for a particular part, provide opportunities for social engineering or other (Citation: Warwick2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Social engineering and other attempts to learn about business practices and processes would not immediately be associated with an impending cyber event.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: To get any kind of fidelity into business processes would require insider access. Basic processes could be mapped, but understanding where in the organization these processes take place and who to target during any given phase of the process would generally be difficult.",
"description":"Physical access may be required for certain types of adversarial actions. (Citation: CyberPhysicalAssessment) (Citation: CriticalInfrastructureAssessment)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Physical security is often unaware of implications of physical access to network. However, some organizations have thorough physical security measures that would log and report attempted incursions, perimeter breaches, unusual RF at a site, etc.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Social engineering and OSINT are still generally successful. Physical locations of offices/sites are easily determined. Monitoring for other sites of interest, such as backup storage vendors, is also easy to accomplish.",
"value":"Assess security posture of physical locations - PRE-T1079",
"description":"Configure and setup booter/stressor services, often intended for server stress testing, to enable denial of service attacks. (Citation: Krebs-Anna) (Citation: Krebs-Booter) (Citation: Krebs-Bazaar)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Purchase of booster services is not observable; potentially can trace booster service used to origin of sale, yet not before attack is executed. Furthermore, subscription does not automatically mean foul intention.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Easily accessible and used to launch DDoS attacks by even novice Internet users, and can be purchased from providers for a nominal fee, some of which even accept credit cards and PayPal payments to do.",
"description":"An adversary will assess collected information such as software/hardware versions, vulnerabilities, patch level, etc. They will analyze technical scanning results to identify weaknesses in the confirmation or architecture. (Citation: SurveyDetectionStrategies) (Citation: CyberReconPaper) (Citation: RSA-APTRecon) (Citation: FireEyeAPT28)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This can be done offline after the data has been collected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Many of the common tools highlight these weaknesses automatically. Adversary can \"dry run\" against the target using known exploits or burner devices to determine key identifiers of software, hardware, and services.",
"description":"Software applications will be built using different technologies, languages, and dependencies. This information may reveal vulnerabilities or opportunities to an adversary. (Citation: CommonApplicationAttacks) (Citation: WebApplicationSecurity) (Citation: SANSTop25)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Impossible to differentiate between an adversary and a normal user when accessing a site to determine the languages/technologies used. If active scanning tools are employed, then the defender has the ability to detect. However, this is typically not acted upon due to the large volume of this type of traffic and it will likely not prompt the defender to take any actionable defense. Defender review of access logs may provide some insight based on trends or patterns.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Basic interaction with the site provides insight into the programming languages/technologies used for a given web site. Additionally many of the active scanning tools will also provide some insight into this information.",
"description":"Analysts may receive Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) and Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs) from leadership or key decision makers and generate intelligence requirements to articulate intricacies of information required on a topic or question. (Citation: Herring1999)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Redirecting a communication request from one address and port number combination to another. May be set up to obfuscate the final location of communications that will occur in later stages of an attack. (Citation: SecureWorks HTRAN Analysis)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Infrastructure is (typically) outside of control/visibility of defender and as such as tools are staged for specific campaigns, it will not be observable to those being attacked.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary has control of the infrastructure and will likely be able to add/remove tools to infrastructure, whether acquired via hacking or standard computer acquisition (e.g., [https://aws.amazon.com AWS], VPS providers).",
"description":"Understanding an organizations business processes and tempo may allow an adversary to more effectively craft social engineering attempts or to better hide technical actions, such as those that generate network traffic. (Citation: Scasny2015) (Citation: Infosec-osint)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Current or previous employees may divulge information on the Internet. If insiders are used, the defender may have policies or tools in place to detect loss of this data or knowledge.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: In some cases, this requires some insider knowledge or specialized access to learn when critical operations occur in a corporation. For publicly traded US corporations, there is a lot of open source information about their financial reporting obligations (per SEC). Companies announce their annual shareholder meeting and their quarter phone calls with investors. Information such as this can help the adversary to glean certain aspects of the business processes and/or rhythm.",
"value":"Identify business processes/tempo - PRE-T1057",
"description":"Delivery systems are the infrastructure used by the adversary to host malware or other tools used during exploitation. Building and configuring delivery systems may include multiple activities such as registering domain names, renting hosting space, or configuring previously exploited environments. (Citation: APT1)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: It is detectable once deployed to the public Internet, used for adversarial purposes, discovered, and reported to defenders.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: It is easy to create and burn infrastructure. Otherwise, blacklisting would be more successful for defenders.",
"value":"Build and configure delivery systems - PRE-T1124",
"description":"Personnel internally to a company may have non-electronic specialized access, authorities, or privilege that make them an attractive target for an adversary. One example of this is an individual with financial authority to authorize large transactions. An adversary who compromises this individual might be able to subvert large dollar transfers. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: The layers of data required and potential gaps of information to map a specific person to an authority or privilege on a network requires access to resources that may not tip off a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires an adversary to undergo an intensive research process. It is resource intensive or requires special data access. May be easier for certain specialty use cases.",
"value":"Identify personnel with an authority/privilege - PRE-T1048",
"description":"An adversary may research available open source information about a target commonly found on social media sites such as [https://www.facebook.com Facebook], [https://www.instagram.com Instagram], or [https://www.pinterest.com Pinterest]. Social media is public by design and provides insight into the interests and potentially inherent weaknesses of a target for exploitation by the adversary. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Very public by design. Application of privacy settings is not a panacea.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nCredential pharming a form of attack designed to steal users' credential by redirecting users to fraudulent websites. Pharming can be conducted either by changing the hosts file on a victim's computer or by exploitation of a vulnerability in DNS server software. (Citation: DriveByPharming) (Citation: GoogleDrive Phishing)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Fidelity of networking monitoring must be able to detect when traffic is diverted to non-normal sources at a site level. It is possible to identify some methods of pharming, but detection capabilities are limited and not commonly implemented.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Although it can be difficult to spoof/redirect content to a hostile service via DNS poisoning or MiTM attacks, current malware such as Zeus is able to successfully pharm credentials and end users are not well-versed in checking for certificate mismatches.",
"description":"Leadership identifies gap areas that generate a compelling need to generate a Key Intelligence Topic (KIT) or Key Intelligence Question (KIQ). (Citation: ODNIIntegration) (Citation: ICD115)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Google and Apple provide Google Cloud Messaging and Apple Push Notification Service, respectively, services designed to enable efficient communication between third-party mobile app backend servers and the mobile apps running on individual devices. These services maintain an encrypted connection between every mobile device and Google or Apple that cannot easily be inspected and must be allowed to traverse networks as part of normal device operation. These services could be used by adversaries for communication to compromised mobile devices. (Citation: Securelist Mobile Malware 2013) (Citation: DroydSeuss)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: These services are heavily utilized by mainstream mobile app developers. High volume of communications makes it extremely hard for a defender to distinguish between legitimate and adversary communications.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: These are free services provided by Google and Apple to app developers, and information on how to use them is readily available.",
"value":"OS-vendor provided communication channels - PRE-T1167",
"description":"Job postings, on either company sites, or in other forums, provide information on organizational structure, needs, and gaps in an organization. This may give an adversary an indication of weakness in an organization (such as under-resourced IT shop). Job postings can also provide information on an organizations structure which could be valuable in social engineering attempts. (Citation: JobPostingThreat) (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public source external to the defender's organization.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Very public by design.",
"value":"Identify job postings and needs/gaps - PRE-T1055",
"description":"Social Engineering is the practice of manipulating people in order to get them to divulge information or take an action. (Citation: SEAttackVectors) (Citation: BeachSE2003)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: No technical means to detect an adversary collecting information about a target. Any detection would be based upon strong OPSEC policy implementation.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Very effective technique for the adversary that does not require any formal training and relies upon finding just one person who exhibits poor judgement.",
"description":"Supply chains include the people, processes, and technologies used to move a product or service from a supplier to a consumer. Understanding supply chains may provide an adversary with opportunities to exploit organizational relationships. (Citation: SmithSupplyChain) (Citation: CERT-UKSupplyChain)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires an intensive process. May be easier in certain industries where there are a limited number of suppliers (e.g., SCADA).",
"description":"Analysts identify gap areas that generate a compelling need to generate a Key Intelligence Topic (KIT) or Key Intelligence Question (KIQ). (Citation: BrighthubGapAnalysis) (Citation: ICD115) (Citation: JP2-01)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nInstead of buying, leasing, or renting infrastructure an adversary may compromise infrastructure and use it for some or all of the attack cycle. (Citation: WateringHole2014) (Citation: FireEye Operation SnowMan)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not have visibility on 3rd party sites unless target is successfully enticed to visit one.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Commonly used technique currently (e.g., [https://www.wordpress.com WordPress] sites) as precursor activity to launching attack against intended target (e.g., acquiring botnet or layers of proxies for reducing attribution possibilities).",
"value":"Compromise 3rd party infrastructure to support delivery - PRE-T1111",
"description":"Obfuscation is hiding the day-to-day building and testing of new tools, chat servers, etc. (Citation: LUCKYCAT2012)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Difficult, but defender is well aware of technique and attempts to find discrepancies.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary has a variety of solutions, ranging in difficulty, that can be employed (e.g., BGP hijacking, tunneling, reflection, multi-hop, etc.)\nAdversary can also use misattributable credentials to obtain servers, build environment, [https://aws.amazon.com Amazon Web Services] (AWS) accounts, etc.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nExploits spread through advertising (malvertising) involve injecting malicious or malware-laden advertisements into legitimate online advertising networks and webpages. (Citation: TPMalvertising)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Although some commercial technologies are being advertised which claim to detect malvertising, it largely spreads unknowingly because it doesn't always require an action by a user.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: An adversary can deploy exploits via malvertising using multiple mechanisms. Such mechanisms include an image ad that is infected, redirection, or using social engineering to get the end user to install the malicious software themselves.",
"value":"Deploy exploit using advertising - PRE-T1157",
"description":"A network topology is the arrangement of the various elements of a network (e.g., servers, workstations, printers, routers, firewalls, etc.). Mapping a network allows an adversary to understand how the elements are connected or related. (Citation: man traceroute) (Citation: Shodan Tutorial)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Network mapping techniques/tools typically generate benign traffic that does not require further investigation by a defender since there is no actionable defense to execute. Defender review of access logs may provide some insight based on trends or patterns.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Various available tools and data sources for scouting and detecting network topologies.",
"description":"Obfuscation is the act of creating communications that are more difficult to understand. Encryption transforms the communications such that it requires a key to reverse the encryption. (Citation: FireEyeAPT28)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Techniques and signatures are hard to detect. Advanced communications and exfiltration channels are nearly indistinguishable from background noise.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Known approaches include the use of cryptography for communications, rotating drops sites (such as random list of chat fora), and one-time [https://aws.amazon.com/s3/ Simple Storage Service (S3)] buckets, etc. All require sophisticated knowledge, infrastructure, and funding.",
"value":"Obfuscation or cryptography - PRE-T1090",
"description":"The adversary can use account credentials or signing keys of an existing mobile app developer to publish malicious updates of existing mobile apps to an application store, or to abuse the developer's identity and reputation to publish new malicious apps. Many mobile devices are configured to automatically install new versions of already-installed apps. (Citation: Fraudenlent Apps Stolen Dev Credentials)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Possible to detect compromised credentials if alerting from a service provider is enabled and acted upon by the individual.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The difficulty of obtaining useful developer credentials may vary. Well-organized, professional app developers whose credentials or signing keys would be the most useful to an adversary because of the large install bases of their apps, would likely strongly protect their credentials and signing keys. Less-organized app developers may not protect their credentials and signing keys as strongly, but the credentials and signing keys would also be less useful to an adversary. These less-organized app developers may reuse passwords across sites, fail to turn on multi-factor authentication features when available, or store signing keys in unprotected locations.",
"value":"Choose pre-compromised mobile app developer account credentials or signing keys - PRE-T1168",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nEmails with text only phishing messages do not contain any attachments or links to websites. They are designed to get a user to take a follow on action such as calling a phone number or wiring money. They can also be used to elicit an email response to confirm existence of an account or user. (Citation: Paypal Phone Scam)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: End user training and awareness is the primary defense for flagging a plain text email so the end user does not respond or take any requested action (e.g., calling a designated number).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Sending messages with text only should be accepted in most cases (e.g., not being filtered based on source, content).",
"value":"Spear phishing messages with text only - PRE-T1145",
"description":"Callbacks are malware communications seeking instructions. An adversary will test their malware to ensure the appropriate instructions are conveyed and the callback software can be reached. (Citation: LeeBeaconing)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary controls the test and defender likely has no visibility.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary controls or acquires all pieces of infrastructure and can test outside of defender's visibility.",
"description":"Technical blogs and forums provide a way for technical staff to ask for assistance or troubleshoot problems. In doing so they may reveal information such as operating system (OS), network devices, or applications in use. (Citation: FunAndSun2012)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Cannot detect access to public sites.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Success is dependent upon the existence of detailed technical specifications for target network posted in blogs/forums. Poor OPSEC practices result in an adversary gleaning a lot of sensitive information about configurations and/or issues encountered.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nUsers may be performing legitimate activity but using media that is compromised (e.g., using a USB drive that comes with malware installed during manufacture or supply). Upon insertion in the system the media auto-runs and the malware executes without further action by the user. (Citation: WSUSpect2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Environments without extensive endpoint sensing capabilities do not typically collect this level of detailed information.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Autoruns with USB keys and CDs traditionally were always on (e.g., [http://windows.microsoft.com Windows] 7 is now an exception with a new policy of limiting the always on nature of Autoruns), ensuring and automated system completes a requested action. Specialized use cases exist where automated systems are specifically designed against automatically performing certain actions (e.g., USB/CD insertion and automatically running is disabled in certain environments).",
"value":"Automated system performs requested action - PRE-T1161",
"description":"A payload is the part of the malware which performs a malicious action. The adversary may re-use payloads when the needed capability is already available. (Citation: SonyDestover)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary will likely use code repositories, but detecting an adversary acquiring a payload would require the defender to be monitoring the code repository where the payload is stored. If the adversary re-uses payloads, this allows the defender to create signatures to detect using these known indicators of compromise (e.g., hashes).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Several exploit repositories and tool suites exist for re-use and tailoring.",
"description":"Passive scanning is the act of looking at existing network traffic in order to identify information about the communications system. (Citation: SurveyDetectionStrategies) (Citation: CyberReconPaper)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Generates no network traffic that would enable detection.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Easy to do but it requires a vantage point conducive to accessing this data.",
"description":"Social media provides insight into the target's affiliations with groups and organizations. Certification information can explain their technical associations and professional associations. Personal information can provide data for exploitation or even blackmail. (Citation: Scasny2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public sources are external to the defender's organization. Some social media sites have an option to show you when users are looking at your profile, but an adversary can evade this tracking depending on how they conduct the searches.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Social and business relationship information for an individual can be found by examining their social media contacts (e.g., [https://www.facebook.com Facebook] and [https://www.linkedin.com LinkedIn]). Social media also provides insight into the target's affiliations with groups and organizations. Finally, certification information can explain their technical associations and professional associations.",
"value":"Analyze social and business relationships, interests, and affiliations - PRE-T1072",
"description":"Technical network hiding techniques are methods of modifying traffic to evade network signature detection or to utilize misattribution techniques. Examples include channel/IP/VLAN hopping, mimicking legitimate operations, or seeding with misinformation. (Citation: HAMMERTOSS2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Unless defender is dissecting protocols or performing network signature analysis on any protocol deviations/patterns, this technique is largely undetected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Some of the hiding techniques require special accesses (network, proximity, physical, etc.) and/or may rely on knowledge of how the defender operates and/or awareness on what visibility the defender has and how it is obtained",
"description":"Once a persona has been developed an adversary will use it to create connections to targets of interest. These connections may be direct or may include trying to connect through others. (Citation: NEWSCASTER2014) (Citation: BlackHatRobinSage)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Unless there is some threat intelligence reporting, these users are hard to differentiate.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: The nature of social media is such that the adversary naturally connects to a target of interest without suspicion, given the purpose of the platform is to promote connections between individuals. Performing activities like typical users, but with specific intent in mind.",
"value":"Friend/Follow/Connect to targets of interest - PRE-T1121",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nRemovable media containing malware can be injected in to a supply chain at large or small scale. It can also be physically placed for someone to find or can be sent to someone in a more targeted manner. The intent is to have the user utilize the removable media on a system where the adversary is trying to gain access. (Citation: USBMalwareAttacks) (Citation: FPDefendNewDomain) (Citation: ParkingLotUSB)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: From a technical perspective, detection of an adversary disseminating removable media is not possible as there is no technical element involved until the compromise phase. Most facilities generally do not perform extensive physical security patrols, which would be necessary in order to promptly identify an adversary deploying removable media to be used in an attack.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Commonly executed technique by penetration testers to gain access to networks via end users who are innately trusting of newly found or available technology.",
"value":"Disseminate removable media - PRE-T1156",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nReplacing a legitimate binary with malware can be accomplished either by replacing a binary on a legitimate download site or standing up a fake or alternative site with the malicious binary. The intent is to have a user download and run the malicious binary thereby executing malware. (Citation: FSecureICS)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: On the host end user system, integrity checking (e.g., hash verification, code signing enforcement), application whitelisting, sandboxing, or behavioral-based/heuristic-based systems are most likely to be successful in detecting this technique. On the source webserver, detecting binary changes is easy to detect if performed.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires the adversary to replace a binary on a website where users will download the binary (e.g., patch, firmware update, software application) as innately trusted. The additional challenge is the reduced set of vendor-trusted websites that are vulnerable.",
"value":"Replace legitimate binary with malware - PRE-T1155",
"description":"Data sets can be anything from Security Exchange Commission (SEC) filings to public phone numbers. Many datasets are now either publicly available for free or can be purchased from a variety of data vendors. Open source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence gathered from publicly available sources. This can include both information gathered on-line as well as in the physical world. (Citation: SANSThreatProfile) (Citation: Infosec-osint) (Citation: isight-osint)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This activity is indistinguishable from legitimate business uses and easy to obtain.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Large quantities of data exists on people, organizations and technologies whether divulged wittingly or collected as part of doing business on the Internet (unbeknownst to the user/company). Search engine and database indexing companies continuously mine this information and make it available to anyone who queries for it.",
"value":"Acquire OSINT data sets and information - PRE-T1054",
"description":"An adversary may secure and protect their infrastructure just as defenders do. This could include the use of VPNs, security software, logging and monitoring, passwords, or other defensive measures. (Citation: KrebsTerracottaVPN)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Indistinguishable from standard security practices employed by legitimate operators.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary benefits from our own advances, techniques, and software when securing and protecting their own development infrastructure.",
"value":"Secure and protect infrastructure - PRE-T1094",
"description":"Firmware is permanent software programmed into the read-only memory of a device. As with other types of software, firmware may be updated over time and have multiple versions. (Citation: Abdelnur Advanced Fingerprinting)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: No easy way for defenders to detect when an adversary collects this information.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Depending upon the target device, there are variable ways for an adversary to determine the firmware version. In some cases, this information can be derived from easily obtained information. For example, in [http://www.cisco.com Cisco] devices, the firmware version is easily determined once the device model and OS version is known since it is included in the release notes.",
"description":"Leadership derives Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) and Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs) from the areas of most interest to them. KITs are an expression of management's intelligence needs with respect to early warning, strategic and operational decisions, knowing the competition, and understanding the competitive situation. KIQs are the critical questions aligned by KIT which provide the basis for collection plans, create a context for analytic work, and/or identify necessary external operations. (Citation: Herring1999)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Common Vulnerability Enumeration (CVE) is a dictionary of publicly known information about security vulnerabilities and exposures. An adversary can use this information to target specific software that may be vulnerable. (Citation: WeaponsVulnerable) (Citation: KasperskyCarbanak)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public source external to the defender's organization.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Using standard headers/fingerprints from normal traffic, it is often trivial to identify the SW or HW the target is running, which can be correlated against known CVEs and exploit packages.",
"description":"A wide variety of cloud, virtual private services, hosting, compute, and storage solutions are available as 3rd party infrastructure services. These services could provide an adversary with another avenue of approach or compromise. (Citation: LUCKYCAT2012) (Citation: Schneier-cloud) (Citation: Computerworld-suppliers)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary searches publicly available sources and may find this information on the 3rd party web site listing new customers/clients.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Press releases may reveal this information particularly when it is an expected cost savings or improvement for scalability/reliability.",
"value":"Determine 3rd party infrastructure services - PRE-T1061",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nA technique that takes advantage of flaws in client-side applications without targeting specific users. For example, an exploit placed on an often widely used public web site intended for drive-by delivery to whomever visits the site. (Citation: CitizenLabGreatCannon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defensive technologies exist to scan web content before delivery to the requested end user. However, this is not fool proof as some sites encrypt web communications and the adversary constantly moves to sites not previously flagged as malicious thus defeating this defense. Host-based defenses can also aid in detection/mitigation as well as detection by the web site that got compromised.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Commonly executed technique to place an exploit on an often widely used public web site intended for driveby delivery.",
"description":"Instead of buying, leasing, or renting infrastructure an adversary may compromise infrastructure and use it for some or all of the attack cycle. (Citation: WateringHole2014) (Citation: FireEye Operation SnowMan)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not have visibility on 3rd party sites unless target is successfully enticed to visit one.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Commonly used technique currently (e.g., [https://www.wordpress.com WordPress] sites) as precursor activity to launching attack against intended target (e.g., acquiring botnet or layers of proxies for reducing attribution possibilities).",
"value":"Compromise 3rd party infrastructure to support delivery - PRE-T1089",
"description":"Email addresses, logon credentials, and other forms of online identification typically share a common format. This makes guessing other credentials within the same domain easier. For example if a known email address is first.last@company.com it is likely that others in the company will have an email in the same format. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Easily determined and not intended to be protected information. Publicly collected and shared repositories of email addresses exist.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Scraping of known email addresses from the target will likely reveal the target standard for address/username format. This information is easily discoverable.",
"value":"Discover target logon/email address format - PRE-T1032",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nThe use of software, data, or commands to take advantage of a weakness in a computer system or program in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior. The weakness in the system can be a bug, a glitch, or a design vulnerability. (Citation: GoogleCrawlerSQLInj)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: If the application and network are designed well, the defender should be able to utilize logging and application logic to catch and deflect SQL injection attacks.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Launching a SQL injection attack is not overly complex and a commonly used technique. This technique, however, requires finding a vulnerable application.",
"description":"Key Intelligence Topics (KITs) and Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs) may be further subdivided to focus on political, economic, diplomatic, military, financial, or intellectual property categories. An adversary may specify KITs or KIQs in this manner in order to understand how the information they are pursuing can have multiple uses and to consider all aspects of the types of information they need to target for a particular purpose. (Citation: CompetitiveIntelligence) (Citation: CompetitiveIntelligence)KIT.\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Obfuscation is hiding the day-to-day building and testing of new tools, chat servers, etc. (Citation: DellComfooMasters)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: While possible to detect given a significant sample size, depending on how the unique identifier is used detection may be difficult as similar patterns may be employed elsewhere (e.g., content hosting providers, account reset URLs).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: An adversary can easily generate pseudo-random identifiers to associate with a specific target, include the indicator as part of a URL and then identify which target was successful.",
"description":"Malware may perform differently on different platforms (computer vs handheld) and different operating systems ([http://www.ubuntu.com Ubuntu] vs [http://www.apple.com/osx/ OS X]), and versions ([http://windows.microsoft.com Windows] 7 vs 10) so malicious actors will test their malware in the environment(s) where they most expect it to be executed. (Citation: BypassMalwareDefense)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary controls the test and defender likely has no visibility.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary can simulate most environments (e.g., variable operating systems, patch levels, application versions) with details available from other techniques.",
"value":"Test malware in various execution environments - PRE-T1134",
"description":"Determining if a \"corporate\" help desk exists, the degree of access and control it has, and whether there are \"edge\" units that may have different support processes and standards. (Citation: SANSCentratlizeManagement)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: No technical means to detect an adversary collecting information about a target. Any detection would be based upon strong OPSEC policy implementation.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires an adversary to undergo a research process to learn the internal workings of an organization. An adversary can do this by social engineering individuals in the company by claiming to need to find information for the help desk, or through social engineering of former employees or business partners.",
"value":"Determine centralization of IT management - PRE-T1062",
"description":"An adversary can test physical access options in preparation for the actual attack. This could range from observing behaviors and noting security precautions to actually attempting access. (Citation: OCIAC Pre Incident Indicators) (Citation: NewsAgencySpy)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender often install badging, cameras, security guards or other detection techniques for physical security and monitoring.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires a physical presence in the space being entered and increased risk of being detected/detained (e.g., recorded on video camera)",
"description":"Code signing is the process of digitally signing executables or scripts to confirm the software author and guarantee that the code has not been altered or corrupted. Users may trust a signed piece of code more than an signed piece of code even if they don't know who issued the certificate or who the author is. (Citation: Adobe Code Signing Cert)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not know what certificates an adversary acquires from a 3rd party. Defender will not know prior to public disclosure if a 3rd party has had their certificate compromised.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: It is trivial to purchase code signing certificates within an organization; many exist and are available at reasonable cost. It is complex to factor or steal 3rd party code signing certificates for use in malicious mechanisms",
"value":"Acquire or compromise 3rd party signing certificates - PRE-T1087",
"description":"Leadership assesses the areas of most interest to them and generates Key Intelligence Topics (KIT) or Key Intelligence Questions (KIQ). For example, an adversary knows from open and closed source reporting that cyber is of interest, resulting in it being a KIT. (Citation: ODNIIntegration)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"value":"Assess leadership areas of interest - PRE-T1001",
"description":"Client configurations information such as the operating system and web browser, along with additional information such as version or language, are often transmitted as part of web browsing communications. This can be accomplished in several ways including use of a compromised web site to collect details on visiting computers. (Citation: UnseenWorldOfCookies) (Citation: Panopticlick)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Typical information collected as part of accessing web sites (e.g., operating system, browser version, basic configurations).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Basic web scripting capability to collect information of interest on users of interest. Requires a compromised web site and the users of interest to navigate there.",
"description":"Every domain registrar maintains a publicly viewable database that displays contact information for every registered domain. Private 'whois' services display alternative information, such as their own company data, rather than the owner of the domain. (Citation: APT1)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Algorithmically possible to detect COTS service usage or use of non-specific mailing addresses (PO Boxes, drop sites, etc.)\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Commercially available or easy to set up and/or register using a disposable email account.",
"description":"Once generated, Key Intelligence Topics (KITs), Key Intelligence Questions (KIQs), and/or intelligence requirements are assigned to applicable agencies and/or personnel. For example, an adversary may decide nuclear energy requirements should be assigned to a specific organization based on their mission. (Citation: AnalystsAndPolicymaking) (Citation: JP2-01)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Personnel internally to a company may belong to a group or maintain a role with electronic specialized access, authorities, or privilege that make them an attractive target for an adversary. One example of this is a system administrator. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires an adversary to undergo an intensive research process. It is resource intensive or requires special data access. May be easier for certain specialty use cases.",
"description":"After compromise, an adversary may utilize additional tools to facilitate their end goals. This may include tools to further explore the system, move laterally within a network, exfiltrate data, or destroy data. (Citation: SofacyHits)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary will likely use code repositories, but development will be performed on their local systems.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Post compromise tool development is a standard part of the adversary's protocol in developing the necessary tools required to completely conduct an attack.",
"value":"Post compromise tool development - PRE-T1130",
"description":"There is usually a delay between when a vulnerability or exploit is discovered and when it is made public. An adversary may target the systems of those known to research vulnerabilities in order to gain that knowledge for use during a different attack. (Citation: TempertonDarkHotel)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: The compromise of unknown vulnerabilities would provide little attack and warning against a defender, rendering it highly challenging to detect.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Finding, attacking, and compromising a 3rd party or closed vulnerability entity is challenging, because those containing the vulnerabilities should be very aware of attacks on their environments have a heightened awareness.",
"value":"Compromise 3rd party or closed-source vulnerability/exploit information - PRE-T1131",
"description":"Open source intelligence (OSINT) is intelligence gathered from publicly available sources. This can include both information gathered on-line, such as from search engines, as well as in the physical world. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This activity is indistinguishable from legitimate business uses and easy to obtain. Direct access to the selected target is not required for the adversary to conduct this technique. There is a limited ability to detect this by looking at referrer fields on local web site accesses (e.g., a person who has accessed your web servers from [https://www.shodan.io Shodan]).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Possible to gather technical intelligence about Internet accessible systems/devices by obtaining various commercial data sets and supporting business intelligence tools for ease of analysis. Commercial data set examples include advertising content delivery networks, Internet mapping/traffic collections, system fingerprinting data sets, device fingerprinting data sets, etc.",
"value":"Acquire OSINT data sets and information - PRE-T1024",
"description":"A wide variety of 3rd party software services are available (e.g., [https://twitter.com Twitter], [https://www.dropbox.com Dropbox], [https://www.google.com/docs/about/ GoogleDocs]). Use of these solutions allow an adversary to stage, launch, and execute an attack from infrastructure that does not physically tie back to them and can be rapidly provisioned, modified, and shut down. (Citation: LUCKYCAT2012) (Citation: Nemucod Facebook)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not have visibility over account creation for 3rd party software services.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: 3rd party services like these listed are freely available.",
"value":"Acquire and/or use 3rd party software services - PRE-T1085",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nUpon successful compromise the adversary may implement methods for confirming success including communication to a command and control server, exfiltration of data, or a verifiable intended effect such as a publicly accessible resource being inaccessible or a web page being defaced. (Citation: FireEye Malware Stages) (Citation: APTNetworkTrafficAnalysis)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Current commercial tools and sensitive analytics can be used to detect communications to command and control servers or data exfiltration.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Certainty of the confirmation of compromise is not guaranteed unless the adversary sees communication to a command and control server, exfiltration of data, or an intended effect occur.",
"value":"Confirmation of launched compromise achieved - PRE-T1160",
"description":"Job postings, on either company sites, or in other forums, provide information on organizational structure and often provide contact information for someone within the organization. This may give an adversary information on people within the organization which could be valuable in social engineering attempts. (Citation: JobPostingThreat)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public source external to the defender's organization.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Very public by design.",
"value":"Identify job postings and needs/gaps - PRE-T1044",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nSocial Engineering is the practice of manipulating people in order to get them to divulge information or take an action. Human Intelligence (HUMINT) is intelligence collected and provided by human sources. (Citation: 17millionScam) (Citation: UbiquityEmailScam)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Assuming an average company does not train its employees to be aware of social engineering techniques, it is not possible to detect the adversary's use unless a highly motivated or paranoid employee informs security. This assessment flips to a 1 in cases of environments where security trains employees to be vigilant or in specialized industries where competitive intelligence and business intelligence train employees to be highly aware. Most likely more complex for an adversary to detect as methods move to physical or non traditionally monitored mechanisms (such as phone calls outside of call centers). Furthermore, the content of such an interaction may be lost due to lack of collection.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Assuming an average adversary whose focus is social engineering, it is not difficult for an adversary. Assuming a HUMINT operation and specialized circumstances, the adversary difficulty becomes 1. Social engineering can be easily done remotely via email or phone. In contrast, HUMINT operations typically would require physical contact at some point in the process, increasing the difficulty.",
"value":"Conduct social engineering or HUMINT operation - PRE-T1153",
"description":"A wide variety of 3rd party software services are available (e.g., [https://twitter.com Twitter], [https://www.dropbox.com Dropbox], [https://www.google.com/docs/about/ GoogleDocs]). Use of these solutions allow an adversary to stage, launch, and execute an attack from infrastructure that does not physically tie back to them and can be rapidly provisioned, modified, and shut down. (Citation: LOWBALL2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not have visibility over account creation for 3rd party software services.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: 3rd party services like these listed are freely available.",
"value":"Acquire and/or use 3rd party software services - PRE-T1107",
"description":"An adversary can probe a victim's network to determine configurations. The configurations may provide opportunities to route traffic through the network in an undetected or less detectable way. (Citation: OSFingerprinting2014)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This can be done offline after the data has been collected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Analyze network traffic to determine security filtering policies, packets dropped, etc.",
"description":"Dynamic DNS is a automated method to rapidly update the domain name system mapping of hostnames to IPs. (Citation: FireEyeSupplyChain)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not know at first use what is valid or hostile traffic without more context.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: It is relatively easy to subscribe to dynamic DNS providers or find ways to get different IP addresses from a cloud provider.",
"description":"An exploit takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer hardware or software. The adversary may need to discover new exploits when existing exploits are no longer relevant to the environment they are trying to compromise. An adversary may monitor exploit provider forums to understand the state of existing, as well as newly discovered, exploits. (Citation: EquationQA)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Public source external to the defender's organization.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Many public sources exist for this information.",
"value":"Discover new exploits and monitor exploit-provider forums - PRE-T1127",
"description":"For attacks incorporating social engineering the utilization of an on-line persona is important. Utilizing an existing persona with compromised accounts may engender a level of trust in a potential victim if they have a relationship, or knowledge of, the compromised persona. (Citation: AnonHBGary) (Citation: Hacked Social Media Accounts)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Possible to detect compromised credentials if alerting from a service provider is enabled and acted upon by the individual.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: It is relatively easy and low cost to purchase compromised credentials. Mining social media sites offers open source information about a particular target. Most users tend to reuse passwords across sites and are not paranoid enough to check and see if spoofed sites from their persona exist across current social media.",
"value":"Choose pre-compromised persona and affiliated accounts - PRE-T1120",
"description":"Open source intelligence (OSINT) provides free, readily available information about a target while providing the target no indication they are of interest. Such information can assist an adversary in crafting a successful approach for compromise. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This activity is indistinguishable from legitimate business uses and easy to obtain.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Possible to gather digital intelligence about a person is easily aided by social networking sites, free/for fee people search engines, and publicly available information (e.g., county databases on tickets/DUIs).",
"value":"Acquire OSINT data sets and information - PRE-T1043",
"description":"The attempt to identify people of interest or with an inherent weakness for direct or indirect targeting to determine an approach to compromise a person or organization. Such targets may include individuals with poor OPSEC practices or those who have a trusted relationship with the intended target. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon) (Citation: Scasny2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Common defenses protecting against poor OPSEC practices are traditionally more policy-based in nature rather than technical. Policy-based mitigations are generally more difficult to enforce and track violations, making it more difficult that this technique can be detected by common defenses.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Specialty cases enable an adversary to use key words in order to search social media and identify personnel with poor OPSEC practices who may have access to specialized information which would make them a target of interest. In addition, the open nature of social media leads to a tendency among individuals to overshare, encouraging poor OPSEC and increasing the ease by which an adversary can identify interesting targets.",
"value":"Identify people of interest - PRE-T1046",
"description":"Network trusts enable communications between different networks with specific accesses and permissions. Network trusts could include the implementation of domain trusts or the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). (Citation: CuckoosEgg) (Citation: CuckoosEgg)Wikipedia (Citation: KGBComputerMe)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This is not easily performed remotely and therefore not a detectable event. If the adversary can sniff traffic to deduce trust relations, this is a passive activity and not detectable.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Determining trust relationships once internal to a network is trivial. Simple tools like trace route can show evidence of firewalls or VPNs and then hosts on the either side of the firewall indicating a different trusted network. Active Directory command line tools can also identify separate trusted networks.\n\nIf completely external to a network, sniffing traffic (if possible) could also reveal the communications protocols that could be guessed to be a trusted network connection (e.g., IPsec, maybe SSL, etc.) though this is error-prone. \n\nWith no other access, this is hard for an adversary to do completely from a remote vantage point.",
"description":"An adversary undergoes an iterative target selection process that may begin either broadly and narrow down into specifics (strategic to tactical) or narrowly and expand outward (tactical to strategic). As part of this process, an adversary may determine a high level target they wish to attack. One example of this may be a particular country, government, or commercial sector. (Citation: CyberAdversaryBehavior) (Citation: JP3-60) (Citation: JP3-12 (R)) (Citation: DoD Cyber 2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. May change for special use cases or adversary and defender overlays.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This is the normal adversary targeting cycle where they utilize our poor OPSEC practices to their advantage.",
"description":"Analyze strengths and weaknesses of the target for potential areas of where to focus compromise efforts. (Citation: FakeLinkedIn)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This can be done offline after the data has been collected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Job postings and hiring requisitions have to be made public for contractors and many times have the name of the organization being supported. In addition, they outline the skills needed to do a particular job, which can provide insight into the technical structure and organization of a target.",
"value":"Analyze organizational skillsets and deficiencies - PRE-T1066",
"description":"If going from strategic down to tactical or vice versa, an adversary would next consider the operational element. For example, the specific company within an industry or agency within a government. (Citation: CyberAdversaryBehavior) (Citation: JP3-60) (Citation: JP3-12 (R)) (Citation: DoD Cyber 2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. May change for special use cases or adversary and defender overlays.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This is the normal adversary targeting cycle where they utilize our poor OPSEC practices to their advantage.",
"value":"Determine operational element - PRE-T1019",
"description":"An adversary can test their planned method of attack against existing security products such as email filters or intrusion detection sensors (IDS). (Citation: WiredVirusTotal)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Use of sites like [https://www.virustotal.com VirusTotal] to test signature detection often occurs to test detection. Defender can also look for newly added uploads as a precursor to an adversary's launch of an attack.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Current open source technologies and websites exist to facilitate adversary testing of malware against signatures.",
"value":"Test signature detection for file upload/email filters - PRE-T1138",
"description":"From a tactical viewpoint, an adversary could potentially have a primary and secondary level target. The primary target represents the highest level tactical element the adversary wishes to attack. For example, the corporate network within a corporation or the division within an agency. (Citation: CyberAdversaryBehavior) (Citation: JP3-60) (Citation: JP3-12 (R)) (Citation: DoD Cyber 2015)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. May change for special use cases or adversary and defender overlays.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This is the normal adversary targeting cycle where they utilize our poor OPSEC practices to their advantage.",
"value":"Determine highest level tactical element - PRE-T1020",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nA technique used to compromise a specific group of end users by taking advantage of flaws in client-side applications. For example, infecting websites that members of a targeted group are known to visit with the goal to infect a targeted user's computer. (Citation: RSASEThreat) (Citation: WikiStagefright) (Citation: ForbesSecurityWeek) (Citation: StrongPity-waterhole)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defensive technologies exist to scan web content before delivery to the requested end user. However, this is not foolproof as some sites encrypt web communications and the adversary constantly moves to sites not previously flagged as malicious thus defeating this defense. Host-based defenses can also aid in detection/mitigation as well as detection by the web site that got compromised. The added challenge for a conditional watering hole is the reduced scope and likely reduced ability to detect or be informed. Determining deltas in content (e.g., differences files type/size/number/hashes) downloaded could also aid in detection.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Commonly executed technique to place an exploit on an often widely used public web site intended for driveby delivery. The additional challenge is the reduced set of options for web sites to compromise since the set is reduced to those often visited by targets of interest.",
"description":"Supply chains include the people, processes, and technologies used to move a product or service from a supplier to a consumer. Understanding supply chains may provide an adversary with opportunities to exploit the people, their positions, and relationships, that are part of the supply chain. (Citation: SmithSupplyChain) (Citation: CERT-UKSupplyChain)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Requires an intensive process to obtain the full picture. It is possible to obtain basic information/some aspects via OSINT. May be easier in certain industries where there are a limited number of suppliers (e.g., SCADA).",
"description":"An adversary needs the necessary skills to set up procured equipment and software to create their desired infrastructure. (Citation: KasperskyRedOctober)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender will not have visibility on 3rd party sites unless target is successfully enticed to visit one.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Skills are common to majority of computer scientists and \"hackers\". Can be easily obtained through contracting if not organic to adversary's organization.",
"value":"Install and configure hardware, network, and systems - PRE-T1113",
"description":"Host based hiding techniques are designed to allow an adversary to remain undetected on a machine upon which they have taken action. They may do this through the use of static linking of binaries, polymorphic code, exploiting weakness in file formats, parsers, or self-deleting code. (Citation: VirutAP)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Techniques are difficult to detect and might occur in uncommon use-cases (e.g., patching, anti-malware, anti-exploitation software).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Some of the host-based hiding techniques require advanced knowledge combined with an understanding and awareness of the target's environment (e.g., exploiting weaknesses in file formats, parsers and detection capabilities).",
"description":"Physical locality information may be used by an adversary to shape social engineering attempts (language, culture, events, weather, etc.) or to plan for physical actions such as dumpster diving or attempting to access a facility. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary searches publicly available sources that list physical locations that cannot be monitored by a defender or are not necessarily monitored (e.g., all IP addresses touching their public web space listing physical locations).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Most corporations now list their locations on public facing websites. Some challenge still exists to find covert or sensitive locations.",
"description":"Leadership conducts a cost/benefit analysis that generates a compelling need for information gathering which triggers a Key Intelligence Toptic (KIT) or Key Intelligence Question (KIQ). For example, an adversary compares the cost of cyber intrusions with the expected benefits from increased intelligence collection on cyber adversaries. (Citation: LowenthalCh4) (Citation: KIT-Herring)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Applicable agencies and/or personnel receive intelligence requirements and evaluate them to determine sub-requirements related to topics, questions, or requirements. For example, an adversary's nuclear energy requirements may be further divided into nuclear facilities versus nuclear warhead capabilities. (Citation: AnalystsAndPolicymaking)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"value":"Receive KITs/KIQs and determine requirements - PRE-T1016",
"description":"Outsourcing, the arrangement of one company providing goods or services to another company for something that could be done in-house, provides another avenue for an adversary to target. Businesses often have networks, portals, or other technical connections between themselves and their outsourced/partner organizations that could be exploited. Additionally, outsourced/partner organization information could provide opportunities for phishing. (Citation: Scasny2015) (Citation: OPM Breach)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Much of this analysis can be done using the target's open source website, which is purposely designed to be informational and may not have extensive visitor tracking capabilities.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Analyzing business relationships from information gathering may provide insight into outsourced capabilities. In certain industries, outsourced capabilities or close business partnerships may be advertised on corporate websites.",
"value":"Analyze presence of outsourced capabilities - PRE-T1080",
"description":"Implementation plans specify how the goals of the strategic plan will be executed. (Citation: ChinaCollectionPlan) (Citation: OrderOfBattle)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Normally, defender is unable to detect. Few agencies and commercial organizations may have unique insights.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Normal aspect of adversary planning lifecycle. May not be done by all adversaries.",
"description":"Using alternative payment options allows an adversary to hide their activities. Options include crypto currencies, barter systems, pre-paid cards or shell accounts. (Citation: Goodin300InBitcoins)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender likely will not have access to payment information. Monitoring crypto-currency or barter boards is resource intensive and not fully automatable.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Easy to use pre-paid cards or shell accounts to pay for services online. Crypto currencies and barter systems can avoid use of trace-able bank or credit apparatus.",
"value":"Non-traditional or less attributable payment options - PRE-T1093",
"description":"In addition to a target's social media presence may exist a larger digital footprint, such as accounts and credentials on e-commerce sites or usernames and logins for email. An adversary familiar with a target's username can mine to determine the target's larger digital footprint via publicly available sources. (Citation: DigitalFootprint) (Citation: trendmicro-vtech)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Information readily available through searches",
"value":"Aggregate individual's digital footprint - PRE-T1052",
"description":"An adversary may identify sensitive personnel information not typically posted on a social media site, such as address, marital status, financial history, and law enforcement infractions. This could be conducted by searching public records that are frequently available for free or at a low cost online. (Citation: RSA-APTRecon)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Searching publicly available sources that cannot be monitored by a defender.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This type of information is useful to understand the individual and their ability to be blackmailed. Searching public records is easy and most information can be purchased for a low cost if the adversary really wants it.",
"value":"Identify sensitive personnel information - PRE-T1051",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nThrough social engineering or other methods, an adversary can get users to perform physical actions that provide access to an adversary. This could include providing a password over the phone or inserting a 'found' CD or USB into a system. (Citation: AnonHBGary) (Citation: CSOInsideOutside)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Non-hypersensing environments do not typically collect this level of detailed information.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Ill-informed users insert devices into their network that they randomly find, despite training educating them why this is not a wise idea.",
"value":"Human performs requested action of physical nature - PRE-T1162",
"description":"During mergers, divestitures, or other period of change in joint infrastructure or business processes there may be an opportunity for exploitation. During this type of churn, unusual requests, or other non standard practices may not be as noticeable. (Citation: RossiMergers) (Citation: MeidlHealthMergers)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Most of this activity would target partners and business processes. Partners would not report. Difficult to tie this activity to a cyber attack.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Mapping joint infrastructure and business processes is difficult without insider knowledge or SIGINT capability. While a merger creates and opportunity to exploit potentially cumbersome or sloppy business processes, advance notice of a merger is difficult; merger information is typically close-hold until the deal is done.",
"value":"Assess opportunities created by business deals - PRE-T1076",
"description":"The process of gathering domain account credentials in order to silently create subdomains pointed at malicious servers without tipping off the actual owner. (Citation: CiscoAngler) (Citation: ProofpointDomainShadowing)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Partial\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Detection of this technique requires individuals to monitor their domain registrant accounts routinely. In addition, defenders have had success with blacklisting sites or IP addresses, but an adversary can defeat this by rotating either the subdomains or the IP addresses associated with the campaign.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: To successfully conduct this attack, an adversary usually phishes the individual behind the domain registrant account, logs in with credentials, and creates a large amount of subdomains.",
"description":"A payload is the part of the malware which performs a malicious action. The adversary may create custom payloads when none exist with the needed capability or when targeting a specific environment. (Citation: APT1)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: It is likely that an adversary will create and develop payloads on inaccessible or unknown networks for OPSEC reasons.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Specialized tools exist for research, development, and testing of virus/malware payloads.",
"description":"Social Engineering is the practice of manipulating people in order to get them to divulge information or take an action. (Citation: SEAttackVectors) (Citation: BeachSE2003)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: No technical means to detect an adversary collecting information about a target. Any detection would be based upon strong OPSEC policy implementation.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Very effective technique for the adversary that does not require any formal training and relies upon finding just one person who exhibits poor judgement.",
"description":"Certificates are designed to instill trust. They include information about the key, information about its owner's identity, and the digital signature of an entity that has verified the certificate's contents are correct. If the signature is valid, and the person examining the certificate trusts the signer, then they know they can use that key to communicate with its owner. Acquiring a certificate for a domain name similar to one that is expected to be trusted may allow an adversary to trick a user in to trusting the domain (e.g., vvachovia instead of [https://www.wellsfargo.com/about/corporate/wachovia/ Wachovia] -- homoglyphs). (Citation: SubvertSSL) (Citation: PaypalScam)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Defender can monitor for domains similar to popular sites (possibly leverage [https://www.alexa.com Alexa] top ''N'' lists as starting point).\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: SSL certificates are readily available at little to no cost.",
"value":"SSL certificate acquisition for domain - PRE-T1114",
"description":"An adversary can run their code on systems with cyber security protections, such as antivirus products, in place to see if their code is detected. They can also test their malware on freely available public services. (Citation: MalwareQAZirtest)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary controls the testing and can ensure data does not leak with proper OPSEC on testing.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Adversary has the ability to procure products and not have reporting return to vendors or can choose to use freely available services",
"value":"Test malware to evade detection - PRE-T1136",
"description":"An exploit takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer hardware or software. The adversary may use or modify existing exploits when those exploits are still relevant to the environment they are trying to compromise. (Citation: NYTStuxnet) (Citation: NationsBuying)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Adversary will likely use code repositories, but development will be performed on their local systems.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Several exploit repositories and tool suites exist for re-use and tailoring.",
"description":"This technique has been deprecated. Please see ATT&CK's Initial Access and Execution tactics for replacement techniques.\n\nIf an adversary can gain physical access to the target's environment they can introduce a variety of devices that provide compromise mechanisms. This could include installing keyboard loggers, adding routing/wireless equipment, or connecting computing devices. (Citation: Credit Card Skimmers)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: This varies depending on the amount of monitoring within the environment. Highly secure environments might have more innate monitoring and catch an adversary doing this more easily.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This likely requires the adversary to have close or insider access to introduce the mechanism of compromise.",
"value":"Unauthorized user introduces compromise delivery mechanism - PRE-T1164",
"description":"Certain types of traffic (e.g., Twitter14, HTTP) are more commonly used than others. Utilizing more common protocols and software may make an adversary's traffic more difficult to distinguish from legitimate traffic. (Citation: symantecNITRO)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: No\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: High level of entropy in communications. High volume of communications makes it extremely hard for a defender to distinguish between legitimate and adversary communications.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: Yes\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: Communications are hidden (but not necessarily encrypted) in an attempt to make the content more difficult to decipher or to make the communication less conspicuous.",
"value":"Common, high volume protocols and software - PRE-T1098",
"description":"Certain types of traffic (e.g., DNS tunneling, header inject) allow for user-defined fields. These fields can then be used to hide data. In addition to hiding data in network protocols, steganography techniques can be used to hide data in images or other file formats. Detection can be difficult unless a particular signature is already known. (Citation: BotnetsDNSC2) (Citation: HAMMERTOSS2015) (Citation: DNS-Tunnel)\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses: Yes\n\nDetectable by Common Defenses explanation: Unless defender is dissecting protocols or performing network signature analysis on any protocol deviations/patterns, this technique is largely undetected.\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary: No\n\nDifficulty for the Adversary explanation: This technique requires a more advanced protocol understanding and testing to insert covert communication into legitimate protocol fields.",
