Adversaries may establish command and control capabilities over commonly used application layer protocols such as HTTP(S), OPC, RDP, telnet, DNP3, and modbus. These protocols may be used to disguise adversary actions as benign network traffic. Standard protocols may be seen on their associated port or in some cases over a non-standard port. Adversaries may use these protocols to reach out of the network for command and control, or in some cases to other infected devices within the network.
Sottokwistjonijiet
| Titlu | Deskrizzjoni |
|---|---|
| Publish/Subscribe Protocols | Adversaries may communicate using publish/subscribe (pub/sub) application layer protocols to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. Commands to the remote system, and often the results of those commands, will be embedded within the protocol traffic between the client and broker. Protocols such as MQTT are widely used in Internet-of-Things (IoT) and operational technology environments where devices are resource constrained and there is limited or unreliable network bandwidth. The protocol follows a publish/subscribe design, with message distribution managed by a centralized broker. Publishers categorize their messages by topics, while subscribers receive messages according to their subscribed topics. An adversary may abuse publish/subscribe protocols to communicate with systems under their control from behind a message broker while also blending in with normal, expected traffic. |
| DNS | Adversaries may communicate using the Domain Name System (DNS) application layer protocol to avoid detection/network filtering by blending in with existing traffic. Commands to the remote system, and often the results of those commands, will be embedded within the protocol traffic between the client and server. DNS beaconing may be used to send commands to remote systems via DNS queries. A DNS beacon is created by tunneling DNS traffic (i.e. Protocol Tunneling). The commands may be embedded into different DNS records, for example, TXT or A records.[3] Adversaries may also use DNS over TLS (DoT) or HTTPS (DoH) for resolving C2 servers. This encrypts the DNS requests and allows the malware to lookup C2 servers without being detected by security systems (e.g., DNS filtering based on indicators of compromise). References
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