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Compromise Infrastructure: Domains

Before compromising a victim, adversaries may hijack domains and/or subdomains that can be used during targeting. Domain registration hijacking is the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of the original registrant.[1] An adversary may gain access to an email account for the person listed as the owner of the domain. The adversary can then claim that they forgot their password in order to make changes to the domain registration. Other possibilities include social engineering a domain registration help desk to gain access to an account or taking advantage of renewal process gaps.

Subdomain hijacking can occur when organizations have DNS entries that point to non-existent or deprovisioned resources. In such cases, an adversary may take control of a subdomain to conduct operations with the benefit of the trust associated with that domain.[2]

ID: T1584.001
Sub-technique of:  T1584
Tactic: Resource Development
Platforms: PRE
Version: 1.0
Created: 01 October 2020
Last Modified: 19 October 2020

Procedure Examples

Name Description
APT1

APT1 hijacked FQDNs associated with legitimate websites hosted by hop points.[3]

Mitigations

Mitigation Description
Pre-compromise

This technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on behaviors performed outside of the scope of enterprise defenses and controls.

Detection

Much of this activity will take place outside the visibility of the target organization, making detection of this behavior difficult. Detection efforts may be focused on related stages of the adversary lifecycle, such as during Command and Control.

References