Currently viewing ATT&CK v7.2 which was live between July 8, 2020 and October 26, 2020. Learn more about the versioning system or see the live site.
Register to stream the next session of ATT&CKcon Power Hour November 12
TECHNIQUES
PRE-ATT&CK
Priority Definition Planning
Priority Definition Direction
Target Selection
Technical Information Gathering
People Information Gathering
Organizational Information Gathering
Technical Weakness Identification
People Weakness Identification
Organizational Weakness Identification
Adversary OPSEC
Establish & Maintain Infrastructure
Persona Development
Build Capabilities
Test Capabilities
Stage Capabilities
Enterprise
Initial Access
Phishing
Supply Chain Compromise
Valid Accounts
Execution
Command and Scripting Interpreter
Inter-Process Communication
Scheduled Task/Job
System Services
User Execution
Persistence
Account Manipulation
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts
Create Account
Create or Modify System Process
Event Triggered Execution
Hijack Execution Flow
Office Application Startup
Pre-OS Boot
Scheduled Task/Job
Server Software Component
Traffic Signaling
Valid Accounts
Privilege Escalation
Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Access Token Manipulation
Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts
Create or Modify System Process
Event Triggered Execution
Hijack Execution Flow
Process Injection
Scheduled Task/Job
Valid Accounts
Defense Evasion
Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Access Token Manipulation
Execution Guardrails
File and Directory Permissions Modification
Hide Artifacts
Hijack Execution Flow
Impair Defenses
Indicator Removal on Host
Masquerading
Modify Authentication Process
Modify Cloud Compute Infrastructure
Obfuscated Files or Information
Pre-OS Boot
Process Injection
Signed Binary Proxy Execution
Signed Script Proxy Execution
Subvert Trust Controls
Traffic Signaling
Trusted Developer Utilities Proxy Execution
Use Alternate Authentication Material
Valid Accounts
Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion
Credential Access
Brute Force
Credentials from Password Stores
Input Capture
Man-in-the-Middle
Modify Authentication Process
OS Credential Dumping
Steal or Forge Kerberos Tickets
Unsecured Credentials
Discovery
Account Discovery
Permission Groups Discovery
Software Discovery
Virtualization/Sandbox Evasion
Lateral Movement
Remote Service Session Hijacking
Remote Services
Use Alternate Authentication Material
Collection
Archive Collected Data
Data from Information Repositories
Data Staged
Email Collection
Input Capture
Man-in-the-Middle
Command and Control
Application Layer Protocol
Data Encoding
Data Obfuscation
Dynamic Resolution
Encrypted Channel
Proxy
Traffic Signaling
Web Service
Exfiltration
Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Exfiltration Over Other Network Medium
Exfiltration Over Physical Medium
Exfiltration Over Web Service
Impact
Data Manipulation
Defacement
Disk Wipe
Endpoint Denial of Service
Network Denial of Service
Mobile
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Privilege Escalation
Defense Evasion
Credential Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
Command and Control
Exfiltration
Impact
Network Effects
Remote Service Effects
  1. Home
  2. Techniques
  3. PRE-ATT&CK
  4. Obfuscation or cryptography

Obfuscation or cryptography

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. [1]

ID: T1313
Sub-techniques:  No sub-techniques
Tactic: Adversary Opsec
Version: 1.0
Created: 14 December 2017
Last Modified: 17 October 2018

Procedure Examples

Name Description
Cleaver

Cleaver has used zhCat to encrypt traffic or use inline obfuscation to make detection more difficult. zhCat makes message traffic look benign.[2]

Detection

Detectable by Common Defenses (Yes/No/Partial): No

Explanation: Techniques and signatures are hard to detect. Advanced communications and exfiltration channels are nearly indistinguishable from background noise.

Difficulty for the Adversary

Easy for the Adversary (Yes/No): Yes

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.

References

  1. FireEye, Inc. (2014). APT 28: A Window into Russia’s Cyber Espionage Operations?. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
  1. Cylance. (2014, December). Operation Cleaver. Retrieved September 14, 2017.