Threats

reflects the complexity of the attack required to exploit the software feature misuse vulnerability.

Adversaries may buy, lease, rent, or obtain infrastructure that can be used during targeting. A wide variety of infrastructure exists for hosting and orchestrating adversary operations. Infrastructure solutions include physical or cloud servers, domains, and third party web services.(Citation: TrendmicroHideoutsLease) Some infrastructure providers offer free trial periods, enabling infrastructure acquisition at limited to no cost.(Citation: Free Trial PurpleUrchin) Additionally, botnets are available for rent or purchase.

An attack on a secure communication protocol where the attacker transmits data to the claimant, Credential Service Provider (CSP), verifier, or Relying Party (RP). Examples of active attacks include man in the middle (MitM), impersonation, and session hijacking.

See threat actor.

The property of an architecture, design, and implementation that can accommodate changes to the threat model, mission or business functions, systems, and technologies without major programmatic impacts.

Adversaries may attempt to position themselves between two or more networked devices using an adversary in the middle (AiTM) technique to support follow on behaviors such as Network Sniffing, Transmitted Data Manipulation, or replay attacks (Exploitation for Credential Access). By abusing features of common networking protocols that can determine the flow of network traffic (e.g. ARP, DNS, LLMNR, etc.), adversaries may force a device to communicate through an adversary controlled system so they can collect information or perform additional actions.(Citation: Rapid7 MiTM Basics)

An adversary may compress or encrypt data that is collected prior to exfiltration using a custom method. Adversaries may choose to use custom archival methods, such as encryption with XOR or stream ciphers implemented with no external library or utility references. Custom implementations of well known compression algorithms have also been used.(Citation: ESET Sednit Part 2)

Adversaries may use utilities to compress and/or encrypt collected data prior to exfiltration. Many utilities include functionalities to compress, encrypt, or otherwise package data into a format that is easier/more secure to transport.

Adversaries may obtain access to generative artificial intelligence tools, such as large language models (LLMs), to aid various techniques during targeting. These tools may be used to inform, bolster, and enable a variety of malicious tasks, including conducting Reconnaissance, creating basic scripts, assisting social engineering, and even developing payloads.(Citation: MSFT AI)

An adversary can leverage a computer's peripheral devices (e.g., microphones and webcams) or applications (e.g., voice and video call services) to capture audio recordings for the purpose of listening into sensitive conversations to gather information.(Citation: ESET Attor Oct 2019)

Adversaries may use bootkits to persist on systems. A bootkit is a malware variant that modifies the boot sectors of a hard drive, allowing malicious code to execute before a computer's operating system has loaded. Bootkits reside at a layer below the operating system and may make it difficult to perform full remediation unless an organization suspects one was used and can act accordingly.

Adversaries may configure system settings to automatically execute a program during system boot or logon to maintain persistence or gain higher level privileges on compromised systems. Operating systems may have mechanisms for automatically running a program on system boot or account logon.(Citation: Microsoft Run Key)(Citation: MSDN Authentication Packages)(Citation: Microsoft TimeProvider)(Citation: Cylance Reg Persistence Sept 2013)(Citation: Linux Kernel Programming) These mechanisms may include automatically executing programs that are placed in specially designated directories or are referenced by repositories that store configuration information, such as the Windows Registry. An adversary may achieve the same goal by modifying or extending features of the kernel.

Adversaries may use scripts automatically executed at boot or logon initialization to establish persistence.(Citation: Mandiant APT29 Eye Spy Email Nov 22)(Citation: Anomali Rocke March 2019) Initialization scripts can be used to perform administrative functions, which may often execute other programs or send information to an internal logging server. These scripts can vary based on operating system and whether applied locally or remotely.

Adversaries may bypass UAC mechanisms to elevate process privileges on system. Windows User Account Control (UAC) allows a program to elevate its privileges (tracked as integrity levels ranging from low to high) to perform a task under administrator level permissions, possibly by prompting the user for confirmation. The impact to the user ranges from denying the operation under high enforcement to allowing the user to perform the action if they are in the local administrators group and click through the prompt or allowing them to enter an administrator password to complete the action.(Citation: TechNet How UAC Works)

Adversaries may attempt to find cloud groups and permission settings. The knowledge of cloud permission groups can help adversaries determine the particular roles of users and groups within an environment, as well as which users are associated with a particular group.

Adversaries may manipulate software dependencies and development tools prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise. Applications often depend on external software to function properly. Popular open source projects that are used as dependencies in many applications, such as pip and NPM packages, may be targeted as a means to add malicious code to users of the dependency.(Citation: Trendmicro NPM Compromise)(Citation: Bitdefender NPM Repositories Compromised 2021)(Citation: MANDVI Malicious npm and PyPI Packages Disguised) This may also include abandoned packages, which in some cases could be re registered by threat actors after being removed by adversaries.(Citation: The Hacker News PyPi Revival Hijack 2024) Adversaries may also employ "typosquatting" or name confusion by choosing names similar to existing popular libraries or packages in order to deceive a user.(Citation: Ahmed Backdoors in Python and NPM Packages)(Citation: Meyer PyPI Supply Chain Attack Uncovered)(Citation: Checkmarx oss seo)

Adversaries may attempt to discover containers and other resources that are available within a containers environment. Other resources may include images, deployments, pods, nodes, and other information such as the status of a cluster.

Adversaries may abuse task scheduling functionality provided by container orchestration tools such as Kubernetes to schedule deployment of containers configured to execute malicious code. Container orchestration jobs run these automated tasks at a specific date and time, similar to cron jobs on a Linux system. Deployments of this type can also be configured to maintain a quantity of containers over time, automating the process of maintaining persistence within a cluster.

Adversaries may create or modify system level processes to repeatedly execute malicious payloads as part of persistence. When operating systems boot up, they can start processes that perform background system functions. On Windows and Linux, these system processes are referred to as services.(Citation: TechNet Services) On macOS, launchd processes known as Launch Daemon and Launch Agent are run to finish system initialization and load user specific parameters.(Citation: AppleDocs Launch Agent Daemons)

Adversaries may collect data related to managed devices from configuration repositories. Configuration repositories are used by management systems in order to configure, manage, and control data on remote systems. Configuration repositories may also facilitate remote access and administration of devices.

Adversaries may search connected removable media on computers they have compromised to find files of interest. Sensitive data can be collected from any removable media (optical disk drive, USB memory, etc.) connected to the compromised system prior to Exfiltration. Interactive command shells may be in use, and common functionality within cmd may be used to gather information.

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, a DoS attack carried out from many sources.

A denial of service (DoS) attack attempts to make a system or network unavailable to legitimate users.

Adversaries may attempt to enumerate local device drivers on a victim host. Information about device drivers may highlight various insights that shape follow on behaviors, such as the function/purpose of the host, present security tools (i.e. Security Software Discovery) or other defenses (e.g., Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion), as well as potential exploitable vulnerabilities (e.g., Exploitation for Privilege Escalation).

Adversaries may create self signed SSL/TLS certificates that can be used during targeting. SSL/TLS 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. In the case of self signing, digital certificates will lack the element of trust associated with the signature of a third party certificate authority (CA).

Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by directly sending a high volume of network traffic to a target. This DoS attack may also reduce the availability and functionality of the targeted system(s) and network. Direct Network Floods are when one or more systems are used to send a high volume of network packets towards the targeted service's network. Almost any network protocol may be used for flooding. Stateless protocols such as UDP or ICMP are commonly used but stateful protocols such as TCP can be used as well.

Adversaries may directly access a volume to bypass file access controls and file system monitoring. Windows allows programs to have direct access to logical volumes. Programs with direct access may read and write files directly from the drive by analyzing file system data structures. This technique may bypass Windows file access controls as well as file system monitoring tools. (Citation: Hakobyan 2009)

Adversaries may corrupt or wipe the disk data structures on a hard drive necessary to boot a system; targeting specific critical systems or in large numbers in a network to interrupt availability to system and network resources.

Adversaries may wipe or corrupt raw disk data on specific systems or in large numbers in a network to interrupt availability to system and network resources. With direct write access to a disk, adversaries may attempt to overwrite portions of disk data. Adversaries may opt to wipe arbitrary portions of disk data and/or wipe disk structures like the master boot record (MBR). A complete wipe of all disk sectors may be attempted.

A distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack uses many systems to overwhelm a target and degrade availability.

Adversaries may gather information about the victim's DNS that can be used during targeting. DNS information may include a variety of details, including registered name servers as well as records that outline addressing for a target’s subdomains, mail servers, and other hosts. DNS MX, TXT, and SPF records may also reveal the use of third party cloud and SaaS providers, such as Office 365, G Suite, Salesforce, or Zendesk.(Citation: Sean Metcalf Twitter DNS Records)

Adversaries may search DNS data for information about victims that can be used during targeting. DNS information may include a variety of details, including registered name servers as well as records that outline addressing for a target’s subdomains, mail servers, and other hosts.

Adversaries may set up their own Domain Name System (DNS) servers that can be used during targeting. During post compromise activity, adversaries may utilize DNS traffic for various tasks, including for Command and Control (ex: Application Layer Protocol). Instead of hijacking existing DNS servers, adversaries may opt to configure and run their own DNS servers in support of operations.

Adversaries may attempt to get a listing of domain accounts. This information can help adversaries determine which domain accounts exist to aid in follow on behavior such as targeting specific accounts which possess particular privileges.

Adversaries may make use of Domain Generation Algorithms (DGAs) to dynamically identify a destination domain for command and control traffic rather than relying on a list of static IP addresses or domains. This has the advantage of making it much harder for defenders to block, track, or take over the command and control channel, as there potentially could be thousands of domains that malware can check for instructions.(Citation: Cybereason Dissecting DGAs)(Citation: Cisco Umbrella DGA)(Citation: Unit 42 DGA Feb 2019)

DoS stands for Denial of Service, an attack targeting system availability.

Adversaries may abuse a double extension in the filename as a means of masquerading the true file type. A file name may include a secondary file type extension that may cause only the first extension to be displayed (ex: <code File.txt.exe</code may render in some views as just <code File.txt</code ). However, the second extension is the true file type that determines how the file is opened and executed. The real file extension may be hidden by the operating system in the file browser (ex: explorer.exe), as well as in any software configured using or similar to the system’s policies.(Citation: PCMag DoubleExtension)(Citation: SOCPrime DoubleExtension)

Adversaries may use email rules to hide inbound emails in a compromised user's mailbox. Many email clients allow users to create inbox rules for various email functions, including moving emails to other folders, marking emails as read, or deleting emails. Rules may be created or modified within email clients or through external features such as the <code New InboxRule</code or <code Set InboxRule</code PowerShell cmdlets on Windows systems.(Citation: Microsoft Inbox Rules)(Citation: MacOS Email Rules)(Citation: Microsoft New InboxRule)(Citation: Microsoft Set InboxRule)

Adversaries may embed payloads within other files to conceal malicious content from defenses. Otherwise seemingly benign files (such as scripts and executables) may be abused to carry and obfuscate malicious payloads and content. In some cases, embedded payloads may also enable adversaries to Subvert Trust Controls by not impacting execution controls such as digital signatures and notarization tickets.(Citation: Sentinel Labs)

Adversaries may encrypt or encode files to obfuscate strings, bytes, and other specific patterns to impede detection. Encrypting and/or encoding file content aims to conceal malicious artifacts within a file used in an intrusion. Many other techniques, such as Software Packing, Steganography, and Embedded Payloads, share this same broad objective. Encrypting and/or encoding files could lead to a lapse in detection of static signatures, only for this malicious content to be revealed (i.e., Deobfuscate/Decode Files or Information) at the time of execution/use.

An adversary may deface systems external to an organization in an attempt to deliver messaging, intimidate, or otherwise mislead an organization or users. External Defacement may ultimately cause users to distrust the systems and to question/discredit the system’s integrity. Externally facing websites are a common victim of defacement; often targeted by adversary and hacktivist groups in order to push a political message or spread propaganda.(Citation: FireEye Cyber Threats to Media Industries)(Citation: Kevin Mandia Statement to US Senate Committee on Intelligence)(Citation: Anonymous Hackers Deface Russian Govt Site) External Defacement may be used as a catalyst to trigger events, or as a response to actions taken by an organization or government. Similarly, website defacement may also be used as setup, or a precursor, for future attacks such as Drive by Compromise.(Citation: Trend Micro Deep Dive Into Defacement)

Adversaries may leverage external facing remote services to initially access and/or persist within a network. Remote services such as VPNs, Citrix, and other access mechanisms allow users to connect to internal enterprise network resources from external locations. There are often remote service gateways that manage connections and credential authentication for these services. Services such as Windows Remote Management and VNC can also be used externally.(Citation: MacOS VNC software for Remote Desktop)

Adversaries may inject malicious code into process via Extra Window Memory (EWM) in order to evade process based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. EWM injection is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

Adversaries may store data in "fileless" formats to conceal malicious activity from defenses. Fileless storage can be broadly defined as any format other than a file. Common examples of non volatile fileless storage in Windows systems include the Windows Registry, event logs, or WMI repository.(Citation: Microsoft Fileless)(Citation: SecureList Fileless) Shared memory directories on Linux systems ( , , , and ) and volatile directories on Network Devices ( and ) may also be considered fileless storage, as files written to these directories are mapped directly to RAM and not stored on the disk.(Citation: Elastic Binary Executed from Shared Memory Directory)(Citation: Akami Frog4Shell 2024)(Citation: Aquasec Muhstik Malware 2024)(Citation: Bitsight 7777 Botnet)(Citation: CISCO Nexus 900 Config).

Adversaries may attempt to hide their file based artifacts by writing them to specific folders or file names excluded from antivirus (AV) scanning and other defensive capabilities. AV and other file based scanners often include exclusions to optimize performance as well as ease installation and legitimate use of applications. These exclusions may be contextual (e.g., scans are only initiated in response to specific triggering events/alerts), but are also often hardcoded strings referencing specific folders and/or files assumed to be trusted and legitimate.(Citation: Microsoft File Folder Exclusions)

Adversaries may gather information about the victim's hosts that can be used during targeting. Information about hosts may include a variety of details, including administrative data (ex: name, assigned IP, functionality, etc.) as well as specifics regarding its configuration (ex: operating system, language, etc.).

Adversaries may gather information on Group Policy settings to identify paths for privilege escalation, security measures applied within a domain, and to discover patterns in domain objects that can be manipulated or used to blend in the environment. Group Policy allows for centralized management of user and computer settings in Active Directory (AD). Group policy objects (GPOs) are containers for group policy settings made up of files stored within a predictable network path .(Citation: TechNet Group Policy Basics)(Citation: ADSecurity GPO Persistence 2016)

Adversaries may check for Internet connectivity on compromised systems. This may be performed during automated discovery and can be accomplished in numerous ways such as using Ping, <code tracert</code , and GET requests to websites, or performing initial speed testing to confirm bandwidth.

Adversaries may gather the victim's IP addresses that can be used during targeting. Public IP addresses may be allocated to organizations by block, or a range of sequential addresses. Information about assigned IP addresses may include a variety of details, such as which IP addresses are in use. IP addresses may also enable an adversary to derive other details about a victim, such as organizational size, physical location(s), Internet service provider, and or where/how their publicly facing infrastructure is hosted.

Adversaries may abuse various implementations of JavaScript for execution. JavaScript (JS) is a platform independent scripting language (compiled just in time at runtime) commonly associated with scripts in webpages, though JS can be executed in runtime environments outside the browser.(Citation: NodeJS)