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T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol Mappings

Adversaries may steal data by exfiltrating it over a different protocol than that of the existing command and control channel. The data may also be sent to an alternate network location from the main command and control server.

Alternate protocols include FTP, SMTP, HTTP/S, DNS, SMB, or any other network protocol not being used as the main command and control channel. Adversaries may also opt to encrypt and/or obfuscate these alternate channels.

Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol can be done using various common operating system utilities such as Net/SMB or FTP.(Citation: Palo Alto OilRig Oct 2016) On macOS and Linux <code>curl</code> may be used to invoke protocols such as HTTP/S or FTP/S to exfiltrate data from a system.(Citation: 20 macOS Common Tools and Techniques)

Many IaaS and SaaS platforms (such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, GitHub, and AWS S3) support the direct download of files, emails, source code, and other sensitive information via the web console or Cloud API.

View in MITRE ATT&CK®

Mappings

Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name Notes
AC-16 Security and Privacy Attributes Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
AC-02 Account Management Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
AC-20 Use of External Systems Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
AC-23 Data Mining Protection Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
AC-03 Access Enforcement Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
AC-04 Information Flow Enforcement Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
AC-06 Least Privilege Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
CA-03 Information Exchange Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
CA-07 Continuous Monitoring Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
CM-02 Baseline Configuration Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
CM-06 Configuration Settings Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
CM-07 Least Functionality Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SA-08 Security and Privacy Engineering Principles Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SA-09 External System Services Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SC-28 Protection of Information at Rest Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SC-31 Covert Channel Analysis Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SC-46 Cross Domain Policy Enforcement Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SC-07 Boundary Protection Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SI-10 Information Input Validation Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SI-15 Information Output Filtering Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SI-03 Malicious Code Protection Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SI-04 System Monitoring Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
SR-04 Provenance Protects T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
PUR-IP-E5 Information Protection Technique Scores T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Comments
Defender for Cloud Apps file policies allow you to enforce a wide range of automated processes. Policies can be set to provide Information Protection, including continuous compliance scans, legal eDiscovery tasks, and DLP for sensitive content shared publicly. Information Protection Protects from Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol attacks due to it preventing users from uploading unprotected data to the cloud, by using the Defender for Cloud Apps session controls. License Requirements: Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 1 and plan 2
References
  1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-cloud-apps/policies-information-protection
DEF-AIR-E5 Automated Investigation and Response Technique Scores T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Comments
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 includes powerful automated investigation and response (AIR) capabilities that can save your security operations team time and effort. As alerts are triggered, it's up to your security operations team to review, prioritize, and respond to those alerts. Keeping up with the volume of incoming alerts can be overwhelming. Automating some of those tasks can help. AIR enables your security operations team to operate more efficiently and effectively. AIR capabilities include automated investigation processes in response to well-known threats that exist today. Appropriate remediation actions await approval, enabling your security operations team to respond effectively to detected threats. With AIR, your security operations team can focus on higher-priority tasks without losing sight of important alerts that are triggered. Examples include: Soft delete email messages or clusters, Block URL (time-of-click), Turn off external mail forwarding, Turn off delegation, etc. Required licenses E5 or Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 licenses.
References
  1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/email-analysis-investigations?view=o365-worldwide
  2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/detect-and-remediate-illicit-consent-grants?view=o365-worldwide
  3. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/address-compromised-users-quickly?view=o365-worldwide
  4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/office-365-security/air-about?view=o365-worldwide
DO365-ATH-E5 Advanced Threat Hunting Technique Scores T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Comments
Advanced hunting is a query-based threat hunting tool that lets you explore up to 30 days of raw data. Advanced hunting in Microsoft Defender XDR allows you to proactively hunt for threats across: Devices managed by Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Emails processed by Microsoft 365, Cloud app activities, authentication events, and domain controller activities. With this level of visibility, you can quickly hunt for threats that traverse sections of your network, including sophisticated intrusions that arrive on email or the web, elevate local privileges, acquire privileged domain credentials, and move laterally to across your devices. Advanced hunting supports two modes, guided and advanced. Users use advanced mode if they are comfortable using Kusto Query Language (KQL) to create queries from scratch. Advanced Threat Hunting Detects Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol attacks due to the DeviceNetworkEvents table in the advanced hunting schema which contains information about network connections and related events which monitors for newly constructed network connections. License Requirements: Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 plan 2
References
  1. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender/advanced-hunting-devicenetworkevents-table?view=o365-worldwide
  2. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender/advanced-hunting-schema-tables?view=o365-worldwide
  3. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender/advanced-hunting-query-emails-devices?view=o365-worldwide
  4. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/security/defender/advanced-hunting-overview?view=o365-worldwide

ATT&CK Subtechniques

Technique ID Technique Name Number of Mappings
T1048.001 Exfiltration Over Symmetric Encrypted Non-C2 Protocol 12
T1048.002 Exfiltration Over Asymmetric Encrypted Non-C2 Protocol 23
T1048.003 Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol 23