- Tactics
- Command and Control
- Platforms
- ESXi, Linux, macOS, Windows
- Reference
- attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1132
Description
Adversaries may encode data to make the content of command and control traffic more difficult to detect. Command and control (C2) information can be encoded using a standard data encoding system. Use of data encoding may adhere to existing protocol specifications and includes use of ASCII, Unicode, Base64, MIME, or other binary-to-text and character encoding systems.(Citation: Wikipedia Binary-to-text Encoding) (Citation: Wikipedia Character Encoding) Some data encoding systems may also result in data compression, such as gzip.
Sub-techniques
How GTK Cyber trains on this
GTK Cyber's Threat Hunting with Data Science course teaches you to build machine-learning detections for techniques like this across the MITRE ATT&CK framework, including the Command and Control tactic this technique falls under. Practitioner-led, focused on real detections, not memorizing technique IDs.
Related techniques
- T1001 - Data Obfuscation
- T1008 - Fallback Channels
- T1071 - Application Layer Protocol
- T1090 - Proxy
- T1092 - Communication Through Removable Media
- T1095 - Non-Application Layer Protocol
- T1102 - Web Service
- T1104 - Multi-Stage Channels
- T1105 - Ingress Tool Transfer
- T1205 - Traffic Signaling
- T1219 - Remote Access Tools
- T1568 - Dynamic Resolution