Non-Standard Encoding (T1132.002)

Tactic: Command and Control

Tactics
Command and Control
Platforms
ESXi, Linux, macOS, Windows
Reference
attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1132.002

Description

Adversaries may encode data with a non-standard data encoding system to make the content of command and control traffic more difficult to detect. Command and control (C2) information can be encoded using a non-standard data encoding system that diverges from existing protocol specifications. Non-standard data encoding schemes may be based on or related to standard data encoding schemes, such as a modified Base64 encoding for the message body of an HTTP request.(Citation: Wikipedia Binary-to-text Encoding)(Citation: Wikipedia Character Encoding)

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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.

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