Adversaries may send spearphishing emails with a malicious link in an attempt to gain access to victim systems. Spearphishing with a link is a specific variant of spearphishing. It is different from other forms of spearphishing in that it employs the use of links to download malware contained in email, instead of attaching malicious files to the email itself, to avoid defenses that may inspect email attachments. Spearphishing may also involve social engineering techniques, such as posing as a trusted source.
All forms of spearphishing are electronically delivered social engineering targeted at a specific individual, company, or industry. In this case, the malicious emails contain links. Generally, the links will be accompanied by social engineering text and require the user to actively click or copy and paste a URL into a browser, leveraging User Execution. The visited website may compromise the web browser using an exploit, or the user will be prompted to download applications, documents, zip files, or even executables depending on the pretext for the email in the first place. Adversaries may also include links that are intended to interact directly with an email reader, including embedded images intended to exploit the end system directly or verify the receipt of an email (i.e. web bugs/web beacons). Links may also direct users to malicious applications designed to Steal Application Access Tokens, like OAuth tokens, in order to gain access to protected applications and information.(Citation: Trend Micro Pawn Storm OAuth 2017)
View in MITRE ATT&CK®| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| virus_total | Virus Total | technique_scores | T1566.002 | Spearphishing Link |
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VirusTotal, now part of Google Cloud, provides threat context and reputation data to help analyze suspicious files, URLs, domains, and IP addresses to detect cybersecurity threats. This control can help mitigate adversaries sending malware through spearphishing emails. The malware-scanner service scans the uploaded document for malware. If the document is infected, the service moves it to a quarantined bucket; otherwise the document is moved into another bucket that holds uninfected scanned documents.
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| cloud_ids | Cloud IDS | technique_scores | T1566.002 | Spearphishing Link |
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Often used by adversaries to gain access to a system, Palo Alto Network's vulnerability signatures are able to detect when a user attempts to connect to a malicious site with a phishing kit landing page.
Although there are other ways an adversary could attempt a phishing attack, this technique was scored as significant based on Palo Alto Network's advanced threat detection technology which constantly updates to detect against variations of these cyber-attacks.
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