Masquerading: Masquerade Account Name
Other sub-techniques of Masquerading (10)
Adversaries may match or approximate the names of legitimate accounts to make newly created ones appear benign. This will typically occur during Create Account, although accounts may also be renamed at a later date. This may also coincide with Account Access Removal if the actor first deletes an account before re-creating one with the same name.(Citation: Huntress MOVEit 2023) Often, adversaries will attempt to masquerade as service accounts, such as those associated with legitimate software, data backups, or container cluster management.(Citation: Elastic CUBA Ransomware 2022)(Citation: Aquasec Kubernetes Attack 2023) They may also give accounts generic, trustworthy names, such as “admin”, “help”, or “root.”(Citation: Invictus IR Cloud Ransomware 2024) Sometimes adversaries may model account names off of those already existing in the system, as a follow-on behavior to Account Discovery. Note that this is distinct from Impersonation, which describes impersonating specific trusted individuals or organizations, rather than user or service account names.
Procedure Examples |
|
Name | Description |
---|---|
Flame |
Flame can create backdoor accounts with login `HelpAssistant` on domain connected systems if appropriate rights are available.(Citation: Kaspersky Flame)(Citation: Kaspersky Flame Functionality) |
Magic Hound |
Magic Hound has created local accounts named `help` and `DefaultAccount` on compromised machines.(Citation: DFIR Report APT35 ProxyShell March 2022)(Citation: Microsoft Iranian Threat Actor Trends November 2021) |
Dragonfly |
Dragonfly has created accounts disguised as legitimate backup and service accounts as well as an email administration account.(Citation: US-CERT TA18-074A) |
ServHelper |
ServHelper has created a new user named `supportaccount`.(Citation: Proofpoint TA505 Jan 2019) |
During the 2016 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team created two new accounts, “admin” and “система” (System).(Citation: Dragos Crashoverride 2018) |
|
APT3 |
APT3 has been known to create or enable accounts, such as |
Mitigations |
|
Mitigation | Description |
---|---|
Audit |
Perform audits or scans of systems, permissions, insecure software, insecure configurations, etc. to identify potential weaknesses. |
User Account Management |
Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts. |
References
- Michael Katchinskiy, Assaf Morag. (2023, April 21). First-Ever Attack Leveraging Kubernetes RBAC to Backdoor Clusters. Retrieved July 14, 2023.
- John Hammond. (2023, June 1). MOVEit Transfer Critical Vulnerability CVE-2023-34362 Rapid Response. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
- Invictus IR. (2024, January 11). Ransomware in the cloud. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
- Daniel Stepanic, Derek Ditch, Seth Goodwin, Salim Bitam, Andrew Pease. (2022, September 7). CUBA Ransomware Campaign Analysis. Retrieved August 5, 2024.
- Gostev, A. (2012, May 30). Flame: Bunny, Frog, Munch and BeetleJuice…. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
- Gostev, A. (2012, May 28). The Flame: Questions and Answers. Retrieved March 1, 2017.
- MSTIC. (2021, November 16). Evolving trends in Iranian threat actor activity – MSTIC presentation at CyberWarCon 2021. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- DFIR Report. (2022, March 21). APT35 Automates Initial Access Using ProxyShell. Retrieved May 25, 2022.
- US-CERT. (2018, March 16). Alert (TA18-074A): Russian Government Cyber Activity Targeting Energy and Other Critical Infrastructure Sectors. Retrieved June 6, 2018.
- Schwarz, D. and Proofpoint Staff. (2019, January 9). ServHelper and FlawedGrace - New malware introduced by TA505. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
- Joe Slowik. (2018, October 12). Anatomy of an Attack: Detecting and Defeating CRASHOVERRIDE. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
- valsmith. (2012, September 21). More on APTSim. Retrieved September 28, 2017.
Связанные риски
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