T1001.001: Junk Data

Adversaries may add junk data to protocols used for command and control to make detection more difficult. By adding random or meaningless data to the protocols used for command and control, adversaries can prevent trivial methods for decoding, deciphering, or otherwise analyzing the traffic. Examples may include appending/prepending data with junk characters or writing junk characters between significant characters.

Detection

IDDS0029Data source and componentNetwork Traffic: Network Traffic ContentDescription

Monitor and analyze traffic patterns and packet inspection associated to protocol(s), leveraging SSL/TLS inspection for encrypted traffic, 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)).

Mitigation

IDM1031NameNetwork Intrusion PreventionDescription

Network intrusion detection and prevention systems that use network signatures to identify traffic for specific adversary malware can be used to mitigate some obfuscation activity at the network level.