Protocol Tunneling, Technique T1572 - Enterprise | MITRE ATT&CK®

Protocol Tunneling, Technique T1572 - Enterprise | MITRE ATT&CK®
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Techniques
Enterprise
Protocol Tunneling
Protocol Tunneling
Adversaries may tunnel network communications to and from a victim system within a separate protocol to avoid detection/network filtering and/or enable access to otherwise unreachable systems. Tunneling involves explicitly encapsulating a protocol within another. This behavior may conceal malicious traffic by blending in with existing traffic and/or provide an outer layer of encryption (similar to a VPN). Tunneling could also enable routing of network packets that would otherwise not reach their intended destination, such as SMB, RDP, or other traffic that would be filtered by network appliances or not routed over the Internet.
There are various means to encapsulate a protocol within another protocol. For example, adversaries may perform SSH tunneling (also known as SSH port forwarding), which involves forwarding arbitrary data over an encrypted SSH tunnel.
[1]
[2]
Protocol Tunneling
may also be abused by adversaries during
Dynamic Resolution
. Known as DNS over HTTPS (DoH), queries to resolve C2 infrastructure may be encapsulated within encrypted HTTPS packets.
[3]
Adversaries may also leverage
Protocol Tunneling
in conjunction with
Proxy
and/or
Protocol or Service Impersonation
to further conceal C2 communications and infrastructure.
ID:
T1572
Sub-techniques:
No sub-techniques
Tactic:
Command and Control
Platforms:
ESXi, Linux, Windows, macOS
Version:
1.1
Created:
15 March 2020
Last Modified:
15 April 2025
Version Permalink
Live Version
Procedure Examples
ID
Name
Description
C0034
2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack
During the
2022 Ukraine Electric Power Attack
Sandworm Team
deployed the GOGETTER tunneler software to establish a "Yamux" TLS-based C2 channel with an external server(s).
[4]
S1063
Brute Ratel C4
Brute Ratel C4
can use DNS over HTTPS for C2.
[5]
[6]
C0027
C0027
During
C0027
Scattered Spider
used SSH tunneling in targeted environments.
[7]
C0032
C0032
During the
C0032
campaign,
TEMP.Veles
used encrypted SSH-based PLINK tunnels to transfer tools and enable RDP connections throughout the environment.
[8]
G0114
Chimera
Chimera
has encapsulated
Cobalt Strike
's C2 protocol in DNS and HTTPS.
[9]
G1021
Cinnamon Tempest
Cinnamon Tempest
has used the Iox and NPS proxy and tunneling tools in combination create multiple connections through a single tunnel.
[10]
G0080
Cobalt Group
Cobalt Group
has used the Plink utility to create SSH tunnels.
[11]
[12]
[13]
S0154
Cobalt Strike
Cobalt Strike
uses a custom command and control protocol that is encapsulated in HTTP, HTTPS, or DNS. In addition, it conducts peer-to-peer communication over Windows named pipes encapsulated in the SMB protocol. All protocols use their standard assigned ports.
[14]
[15]
C0004
CostaRicto
During
CostaRicto
, the threat actors set up remote SSH tunneling into the victim's environment from a malicious domain.
[16]
C0029
Cutting Edge
During
Cutting Edge
, threat actors used Iodine to tunnel IPv4 traffic over DNS.
[17]
S0687
Cyclops Blink
Cyclops Blink
can use DNS over HTTPS (DoH) to resolve C2 nodes.
[18]
S0038
Duqu
Duqu
uses a custom command and control protocol that communicates over commonly used ports, and is frequently encapsulated by application layer protocols.
[19]
G1003
Ember Bear
Ember Bear
has used ProxyChains to tunnel protocols to internal networks.
[20]
G1016
FIN13
FIN13
has utilized web shells and Java tools for tunneling capabilities to and from compromised assets.
[21]
G0037
FIN6
FIN6
used the Plink command-line utility to create SSH tunnels to C2 servers.
[22]
S0173
FLIPSIDE
FLIPSIDE
uses RDP to tunnel traffic from a victim environment.
[23]
G0117
Fox Kitten
Fox Kitten
has used protocol tunneling for communication and RDP activity on compromised hosts through the use of open source tools such as
ngrok
and custom tool SSHMinion.
[24]
[25]
[26]
S1144
FRP
FRP
can tunnel SSH and Unix Domain Socket communications over TCP between external nodes and exposed resources behind firewalls or NAT.
[27]
S1044
FunnyDream
FunnyDream
can connect to HTTP proxies via TCP to create a tunnel to C2.
[28]
S1027
Heyoka Backdoor
Heyoka Backdoor
can use spoofed DNS requests to create a bidirectional tunnel between a compromised host and its C2 servers.
[29]
S0604
Industroyer
Industroyer
attempts to perform an HTTP CONNECT via an internal proxy to establish a tunnel.
[30]
S1020
Kevin
Kevin
can use a custom protocol tunneled through DNS or HTTP.
[31]
G0065
Leviathan
Leviathan
has used protocol tunneling to further conceal C2 communications and infrastructure.
[32]
S1141
LunarWeb
LunarWeb
can run a custom binary protocol under HTTPS for C2.
[33]
G0059
Magic Hound
Magic Hound
has used Plink to tunnel RDP over SSH.
[34]
S1015
Milan
Milan
can use a custom protocol tunneled through DNS or HTTP.
[31]
S0699
Mythic
Mythic
can use SOCKS proxies to tunnel traffic through another protocol.
[35]
S1189
Neo-reGeorg
Neo-reGeorg
can tunnel data in and out of targeted networks.
[36]
S0508
ngrok
ngrok
can tunnel RDP and other services securely over internet connections.
[37]
[38]
[39]
[40]
G0049
OilRig
OilRig
has used the Plink utility and other tools to create tunnels to C2 servers.
[41]
[42]
[43]
[44]
S0650
QakBot
The
QakBot
proxy module can encapsulate SOCKS5 protocol within its own proxy protocol.
[45]
S1187
reGeorg
reGeorg
can tunnel TCP sessions including RDP, SSH, and SMB through HTTP.
[46]
[47]
[48]
G1045
Salt Typhoon
Salt Typhoon
has modified device configurations to create and use Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) tunnels.
[49]
S0022
Uroburos
Uroburos
has the ability to communicate over custom communications methodologies that ride over common network protocols including raw TCP and UDP sockets, HTTP, SMTP, and DNS.
[50]
Mitigations
ID
Mitigation
Description
M1037
Filter Network Traffic
Consider filtering network traffic to untrusted or known bad domains and resources.
M1031
Network Intrusion Prevention
Network intrusion detection and prevention systems that use network signatures to identify traffic for specific adversary malware can be used to mitigate activity at the network level.
Detection
ID
Data Source
Data Component
Detects
DS0029
Network Traffic
Network Connection Creation
Monitor for newly constructed network connections that are sent or received by untrusted hosts.
Network Traffic Content
Monitor and analyze traffic patterns and packet inspection associated to protocol(s) that do not follow the expected protocol standards and traffic flows (e.g extraneous packets that do not belong to established flows, gratuitous or anomalous traffic patterns, anomalous syntax, or structure). Consider correlation with process monitoring and command line to detect anomalous processes execution and command line arguments associated to traffic patterns (e.g. monitor anomalies in use of files that do not normally initiate connections for respective protocol(s)).
Network Traffic Flow
Monitor network data for uncommon data flows. Processes utilizing the network that do not normally have network communication or have never been seen before are suspicious.
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