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T1572 Protocol Tunneling

Adversaries may tunnel network communications to and from a victim system within a separate protocol to avoid detection/network filtering and/or enable access to otherwise unreachable systems. Tunneling involves explicitly encapsulating a protocol within another. This behavior may conceal malicious traffic by blending in with existing traffic and/or provide an outer layer of encryption (similar to a VPN). Tunneling could also enable routing of network packets that would otherwise not reach their intended destination, such as SMB, RDP, or other traffic that would be filtered by network appliances or not routed over the Internet.

There are various means to encapsulate a protocol within another protocol. For example, adversaries may perform SSH tunneling (also known as SSH port forwarding), which involves forwarding arbitrary data over an encrypted SSH tunnel.1

Protocol Tunneling may also be abused by adversaries during Dynamic Resolution. Known as DNS over HTTPS (DoH), queries to resolve C2 infrastructure may be encapsulated within encrypted HTTPS packets.2

Adversaries may also leverage Protocol Tunneling in conjunction with Proxy and/or Protocol Impersonation to further conceal C2 communications and infrastructure.

Item Value
ID T1572
Sub-techniques
Tactics TA0011
Platforms Linux, Windows, macOS
Version 1.0
Created 15 March 2020
Last Modified 27 March 2020

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
S1063 Brute Ratel C4 Brute Ratel C4 can use DNS over HTTPS for C2.45
G0114 Chimera Chimera has encapsulated Cobalt Strike‘s C2 protocol in DNS and HTTPS.33
G0080 Cobalt Group Cobalt Group has used the Plink utility to create SSH tunnels.222324
S0154 Cobalt Strike Cobalt Strike uses a custom command and control protocol that is encapsulated in HTTP, HTTPS, or DNS. In addition, it conducts peer-to-peer communication over Windows named pipes encapsulated in the SMB protocol. All protocols use their standard assigned ports.78
C0004 CostaRicto During CostaRicto, the threat actors set up remote SSH tunneling into the victim’s environment from a malicious domain.34
S0687 Cyclops Blink Cyclops Blink can use DNS over HTTPS (DoH) to resolve C2 nodes.15
S0038 Duqu Duqu uses a custom command and control protocol that communicates over commonly used ports, and is frequently encapsulated by application layer protocols.18
G0037 FIN6 FIN6 used the Plink command-line utility to create SSH tunnels to C2 servers.21
S0173 FLIPSIDE FLIPSIDE uses RDP to tunnel traffic from a victim environment.19
G0117 Fox Kitten Fox Kitten has used protocol tunneling for communication and RDP activity on compromised hosts through the use of open source tools such as Ngrok and custom tool SSHMinion.303132
S1044 FunnyDream FunnyDream can connect to HTTP proxies via TCP to create a tunnel to C2.17
S1027 Heyoka Backdoor Heyoka Backdoor can use spoofed DNS requests to create a bidirectional tunnel between a compromised host and its C2 servers.9
S0604 Industroyer Industroyer attempts to perform an HTTP CONNECT via an internal proxy to establish a tunnel.20
S1020 Kevin Kevin can use a custom protocol tunneled through DNS or HTTP.10
G0065 Leviathan Leviathan has used protocol tunneling to further conceal C2 communications and infrastructure.26
G0059 Magic Hound Magic Hound has used Plink to tunnel RDP over SSH.25
S1015 Milan Milan can use a custom protocol tunneled through DNS or HTTP.10
S0699 Mythic Mythic can use SOCKS proxies to tunnel traffic through another protocol.6
S0508 Ngrok Ngrok can tunnel RDP and other services securely over internet connections.11121314
G0049 OilRig OilRig has used the Plink utility and other tools to create tunnels to C2 servers.292827
S0650 QakBot The QakBot proxy module can encapsulate SOCKS5 protocol within its own proxy protocol.16

Mitigations

ID Mitigation Description
M1037 Filter Network Traffic Consider filtering network traffic to untrusted or known bad domains and resources.
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.

Detection

ID Data Source Data Component
DS0029 Network Traffic Network Connection Creation

References

  1. SSH.COM. (n.d.). SSH tunnel. Retrieved March 15, 2020. ↩

  2. Gatlan, S. (2019, July 3). New Godlua Malware Evades Traffic Monitoring via DNS over HTTPS. Retrieved March 15, 2020. ↩

  3. Gardiner, J., Cova, M., Nagaraja, S. (2014, February). Command & Control Understanding, Denying and Detecting. Retrieved April 20, 2016. ↩

  4. Harbison, M. and Renals, P. (2022, July 5). When Pentest Tools Go Brutal: Red-Teaming Tool Being Abused by Malicious Actors. Retrieved February 1, 2023. ↩

  5. Kenefick, I. et al. (2022, October 12). Black Basta Ransomware Gang Infiltrates Networks via QAKBOT, Brute Ratel, and Cobalt Strike. Retrieved February 6, 2023. ↩

  6. Thomas, C. (n.d.). Mythc Documentation. Retrieved March 25, 2022. ↩

  7. Strategic Cyber LLC. (2017, March 14). Cobalt Strike Manual. Retrieved May 24, 2017. ↩

  8. Strategic Cyber LLC. (2020, November 5). Cobalt Strike: Advanced Threat Tactics for Penetration Testers. Retrieved April 13, 2021. ↩

  9. Chen, Joey. (2022, June 9). Aoqin Dragon | Newly-Discovered Chinese-linked APT Has Been Quietly Spying On Organizations For 10 Years. Retrieved July 14, 2022. ↩

  10. Kayal, A. et al. (2021, October). LYCEUM REBORN: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. Retrieved June 14, 2022. ↩↩

  11. Kennelly, J., Goody, K., Shilko, J. (2020, May 7). Navigating the MAZE: Tactics, Techniques and Procedures Associated With MAZE Ransomware Incidents. Retrieved May 18, 2020. ↩

  12. Cyware. (2019, May 29). Cyber attackers leverage tunneling service to drop Lokibot onto victims’ systems. Retrieved September 15, 2020. ↩

  13. Segura, J. (2020, February 26). Fraudsters cloak credit card skimmer with fake content delivery network, ngrok server. Retrieved September 15, 2020. ↩

  14. Borja, A. Camba, A. et al (2020, September 14). Analysis of a Convoluted Attack Chain Involving Ngrok. Retrieved September 15, 2020. ↩

  15. Kuzmenko, A. et al. (2021, September 2). QakBot technical analysis. Retrieved September 27, 2021. ↩

  16. Vrabie, V. (2020, November). Dissecting a Chinese APT Targeting South Eastern Asian Government Institutions. Retrieved September 19, 2022. ↩

  17. Symantec Security Response. (2011, November). W32.Duqu: The precursor to the next Stuxnet. Retrieved September 17, 2015. ↩

  18. Bromiley, M. and Lewis, P. (2016, October 7). Attacking the Hospitality and Gaming Industries: Tracking an Attacker Around the World in 7 Years. Retrieved October 6, 2017. ↩

  19. Dragos Inc.. (2017, June 13). CRASHOVERRIDE Analysis of the Threat to Electric Grid Operations. Retrieved December 18, 2020. ↩

  20. FireEye Threat Intelligence. (2016, April). Follow the Money: Dissecting the Operations of the Cyber Crime Group FIN6. Retrieved June 1, 2016. ↩

  21. Svajcer, V. (2018, July 31). Multiple Cobalt Personality Disorder. Retrieved September 5, 2018. ↩

  22. Positive Technologies. (2016, December 16). Cobalt Snatch. Retrieved October 9, 2018. ↩

  23. Matveeva, V. (2017, August 15). Secrets of Cobalt. Retrieved October 10, 2018. ↩

  24. DFIR Report. (2021, November 15). Exchange Exploit Leads to Domain Wide Ransomware. Retrieved January 5, 2023. ↩

  25. CISA. (2021, July 19). (AA21-200A) Joint Cybersecurity Advisory – Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures of Indicted APT40 Actors Associated with China’s MSS Hainan State Security Department. Retrieved August 12, 2021. ↩

  26. Bromiley, M., et al.. (2019, July 18). Hard Pass: Declining APT34’s Invite to Join Their Professional Network. Retrieved August 26, 2019. ↩

  27. Davis, S. and Caban, D. (2017, December 19). APT34 - New Targeted Attack in the Middle East. Retrieved December 20, 2017. ↩

  28. Unit42. (2016, May 1). Evasive Serpens Unit 42 Playbook Viewer. Retrieved February 6, 2023. ↩

  29. Orleans, A. (2020, August 31). Who Is PIONEER KITTEN?. Retrieved December 21, 2020. ↩

  30. CISA. (2020, September 15). Iran-Based Threat Actor Exploits VPN Vulnerabilities. Retrieved December 21, 2020. ↩

  31. ClearSky. (2020, December 17). Pay2Key Ransomware – A New Campaign by Fox Kitten. Retrieved December 21, 2020. ↩

  32. Jansen, W . (2021, January 12). Abusing cloud services to fly under the radar. Retrieved January 19, 2021. ↩

  33. The BlackBerry Research and Intelligence Team. (2020, November 12). The CostaRicto Campaign: Cyber-Espionage Outsourced. Retrieved May 24, 2021. ↩