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],[2]

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.^[3]

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

References

1. SSH.COM. (n.d.). SSH tunnel. Retrieved March 15, 2020.
2. Abigail See, Zhongyuan (Aaron) Hau, Ren Jie Yow, Yoav Mazor, Omer Kidron, and Oren Biderman. (2025, February 4). The Anatomy of Abyss Locker Ransomware Attack. Retrieved April 4, 2025.
3. Gatlan, S. (2019, July 3). New Godlua Malware Evades Traffic Monitoring via DNS over HTTPS. Retrieved March 15, 2020.

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