| ID | Name |
|---|---|
| T1585.001 | Social Media Accounts |
| T1585.002 | Email Accounts |
| T1585.003 | Cloud Accounts |
Adversaries may create and cultivate social media accounts that can be used during targeting. Adversaries can create social media accounts that can be used to build a persona to further operations. Persona development consists of the development of public information, presence, history and appropriate affiliations.[1][2]
For operations incorporating social engineering, the utilization of a persona on social media may be important. These personas may be fictitious or impersonate real people. The persona may exist on a single social media site or across multiple sites (ex: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.). Establishing a persona on social media may require development of additional documentation to make them seem real. This could include filling out profile information, developing social networks, or incorporating photos.
Once a persona has been developed an adversary can use it to create connections to targets of interest. These connections may be direct or may include trying to connect through others.[1][2] These accounts may be leveraged during other phases of the adversary lifecycle, such as during Initial Access (ex: Spearphishing via Service).
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| G0050 | APT32 |
APT32 has set up Facebook pages in tandem with fake websites.[3] |
| G0003 | Cleaver |
Cleaver has created fake LinkedIn profiles that included profile photos, details, and connections.[4] |
| G1012 | CURIUM |
CURIUM has established a network of fictitious social media accounts, including on Facebook and LinkedIn, to establish relationships with victims, often posing as an attractive woman.[5] |
| G1011 | EXOTIC LILY |
EXOTIC LILY has established social media profiles to mimic employees of targeted companies.[6] |
| G0117 | Fox Kitten |
Fox Kitten has used a Twitter account to communicate with ransomware victims.[7] |
| G1001 | HEXANE |
HEXANE has established fraudulent LinkedIn accounts impersonating HR department employees to target potential victims with fake job offers.[8] |
| G0094 | Kimsuky |
Kimsuky has created social media accounts to monitor news and security trends as well as potential targets.[9] |
| G0032 | Lazarus Group |
Lazarus Group has created new Twitter accounts to conduct social engineering against potential victims.[10] |
| G0065 | Leviathan |
Leviathan has created new social media accounts for targeting efforts.[11] |
| G0059 | Magic Hound |
Magic Hound has created fake LinkedIn and other social media accounts to contact targets and convince them--through messages and voice communications--to open malicious links.[12] |
| G1036 | Moonstone Sleet |
Moonstone Sleet has created social media accounts to interact with victims.[13] |
| C0022 | Operation Dream Job |
For Operation Dream Job, Lazarus Group created fake LinkedIn accounts for their targeting efforts.[14][15] |
| C0023 | Operation Ghost |
For Operation Ghost, APT29 registered Twitter accounts to host C2 nodes.[16] |
| G0034 | Sandworm Team |
Sandworm Team has established social media accounts to disseminate victim internal-only documents and other sensitive data.[17] |
| G1033 | Star Blizzard |
Star Blizzard has established fraudulent profiles on professional networking sites to conduct reconnaissance.[18][19] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1056 | 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. |
| ID | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0029 | Network Traffic | 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)). |
| DS0021 | Persona | Social Media |
Consider monitoring social media activity related to your organization. Suspicious activity may include personas claiming to work for your organization or recently created/modified accounts making numerous connection requests to accounts affiliated with your organization.Detection efforts may be focused on related stages of the adversary lifecycle, such as during Initial Access (ex: Spearphishing via Service). |