Adversaries may impersonate a trusted person or organization in order to persuade and trick a target into performing some action on their behalf. For example, adversaries may communicate with victims (via Phishing for Information, Phishing, or Internal Spearphishing) while impersonating a known sender such as an executive, colleague, or third-party vendor. Established trust can then be leveraged to accomplish an adversary’s ultimate goals, possibly against multiple victims.
In many cases of business email compromise or email fraud campaigns, adversaries use impersonation to defraud victims – deceiving them into sending money or divulging information that ultimately enables Financial Theft.
Adversaries will often also use social engineering techniques such as manipulative and persuasive language in email subject lines and body text such as payment, request, or urgent to push the victim to act quickly before malicious activity is detected. These campaigns are often specifically targeted against people who, due to job roles and/or accesses, can carry out the adversary’s goal.
Impersonation is typically preceded by reconnaissance techniques such as Gather Victim Identity Information and Gather Victim Org Information as well as acquiring infrastructure such as email domains (i.e. Domains) to substantiate their false identity.(Citation: CrowdStrike-BEC)
There is the potential for multiple victims in campaigns involving impersonation. For example, an adversary may Compromise Accounts targeting one organization which can then be used to support impersonation against other entities.(Citation: VEC)
View in MITRE ATT&CK®| Capability ID | Capability Description | Mapping Type | ATT&CK ID | ATT&CK Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TVM-05 | Detection Updates | mitigates | T1656 | Impersonation |
Comments
This control requires both CSP and CSC to independently define, implement, and regularly update detection tools, threat signatures, and indicators of compromise based from a threat intelligence platform/program ensuring effective and timely detection of threats across all cloud service models.
A centralized threat intelligence platform or program enables organizations to proactively identify, analyze, and act on cyber threats by leveraging internal and external data sources. As it applies to mitigable techniques, developing a robust cyber threat intelligence capability to mitigate and determine what types and levels of threat may use software exploits and 0-days or N-days against a particular organization. For the impersonation, threat intelligence helps defenders and users be aware of and defend against common lures and active campaigns that have been used for impersonation.
References
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