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T1102 Web Service

Adversaries may use an existing, legitimate external Web service as a means for relaying data to/from a compromised system. Popular websites and social media acting as a mechanism for C2 may give a significant amount of cover due to the likelihood that hosts within a network are already communicating with them prior to a compromise. Using common services, such as those offered by Google or Twitter, makes it easier for adversaries to hide in expected noise. Web service providers commonly use SSL/TLS encryption, giving adversaries an added level of protection.

Use of Web services may also protect back-end C2 infrastructure from discovery through malware binary analysis while also enabling operational resiliency (since this infrastructure may be dynamically changed).

Item Value
ID T1102
Sub-techniques T1102.001, T1102.002, T1102.003
Tactics TA0011
Platforms Linux, Windows, macOS
Permissions required User
Version 1.1
Created 31 May 2017
Last Modified 26 March 2020

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0050 APT32 APT32 has used Dropbox, Amazon S3, and Google Drive to host malicious downloads.27
S0534 Bazar Bazar downloads have been hosted on Google Docs.34
S0635 BoomBox BoomBox can download files from Dropbox using a hardcoded access token.12
S1063 Brute Ratel C4 Brute Ratel C4 can use legitimate websites for external C2 channels including Slack, Discord, and MS Teams.2
S1039 Bumblebee Bumblebee has been downloaded to victim’s machines from OneDrive.5
C0017 C0017 During C0017, APT41 used the Cloudflare services for C2 communications.40
S0335 Carbon Carbon can use Pastebin to receive C2 commands.14
S0674 CharmPower CharmPower can download additional modules from actor-controlled Amazon S3 buckets.11
S1066 DarkTortilla DarkTortilla can retrieve its primary payload from public sites such as Pastebin and Textbin.13
S0600 Doki Doki has used the dogechain.info API to generate a C2 address.17
S0547 DropBook DropBook can communicate with its operators by exploiting the Simplenote, DropBox, and the social media platform, Facebook, where it can create fake accounts to control the backdoor and receive instructions.67
G1003 Ember Bear Ember Bear has used Discord’s content delivery network (CDN) to deliver malware and malicious scripts to a compromised host.26
G1011 EXOTIC LILY EXOTIC LILY has used file-sharing services including WeTransfer, TransferNow, and OneDrive to deliver payloads.25
G0037 FIN6 FIN6 has used Pastebin and Google Storage to host content for their operations.38
G0061 FIN8 FIN8 has used sslip.io, a free IP to domain mapping service that also makes SSL certificate generation easier for traffic encryption, as part of their command and control.28
G0117 Fox Kitten Fox Kitten has used Amazon Web Services to host C2.30
G0047 Gamaredon Group Gamaredon Group has used GitHub repositories for downloaders which will be obtained by the group’s .NET executable on the compromised system.39
S0561 GuLoader GuLoader has the ability to download malware from Google Drive.8
S0601 Hildegard Hildegard has downloaded scripts from GitHub.9
G0100 Inception Inception has incorporated at least five different cloud service providers into their C2 infrastructure including CloudMe.3334
G0140 LazyScripter LazyScripter has used GitHub to host its payloads to operate spam campaigns.29
G0129 Mustang Panda Mustang Panda has used DropBox URLs to deliver variants of PlugX.24
S0198 NETWIRE NETWIRE has used web services including Paste.ee to host payloads.16
S0508 Ngrok Ngrok has been used by threat actors to proxy C2 connections to ngrok service subdomains.23
C0005 Operation Spalax During Operation Spalax, the threat actors used OneDrive and MediaFire to host payloads.41
G0106 Rocke Rocke has used Pastebin, Gitee, and GitLab for Command and Control.3637
S0546 SharpStage SharpStage has used a legitimate web service for evading detection.6
S0589 Sibot Sibot has used a legitimate compromised website to download DLLs to the victim’s machine.15
S0649 SMOKEDHAM SMOKEDHAM has used Google Drive and Dropbox to host files downloaded by victims via malicious links.10
G0139 TeamTNT TeamTNT has leveraged iplogger.org to send collected data back to C2.3231
G0010 Turla Turla has used legitimate web services including Pastebin, Dropbox, and GitHub for C2 communications.1435
S0689 WhisperGate WhisperGate can download additional payloads hosted on a Discord channel.1920211822

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1031 Network Intrusion Prevention Network intrusion detection and prevention systems that use network signatures to identify traffic for specific adversary malware can be used to mitigate activity at the network level.
M1021 Restrict Web-Based Content Web proxies can be used to enforce external network communication policy that prevents use of unauthorized external services.

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0029 Network Traffic Network Connection Creation

References

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