| ID | Name |
|---|---|
| T1598.001 | Spearphishing Service |
| T1598.002 | Spearphishing Attachment |
| T1598.003 | Spearphishing Link |
| T1598.004 | Spearphishing Voice |
Adversaries may send spearphishing messages with a malicious attachment to elicit sensitive information that can be used during targeting. Spearphishing for information is an attempt to trick targets into divulging information, frequently credentials or other actionable information. Spearphishing for information frequently involves social engineering techniques, such as posing as a source with a reason to collect information (ex: Establish Accounts or Compromise Accounts) and/or sending multiple, seemingly urgent messages.
All forms of spearphishing are electronically delivered social engineering targeted at a specific individual, company, or industry. In this scenario, adversaries attach a file to the spearphishing email and usually rely upon the recipient populating information then returning the file.[1][2] The text of the spearphishing email usually tries to give a plausible reason why the file should be filled-in, such as a request for information from a business associate. Adversaries may also use information from previous reconnaissance efforts (ex: Search Open Websites/Domains or Search Victim-Owned Websites) to craft persuasive and believable lures.
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| G0035 | Dragonfly |
Dragonfly has used spearphishing with Microsoft Office attachments to enable harvesting of user credentials.[3] |
| G1008 | SideCopy |
SideCopy has crafted generic lures for spam campaigns to collect emails and credentials for targeting efforts.[4] |
| G0121 | Sidewinder |
Sidewinder has sent e-mails with malicious attachments that lead victims to credential harvesting websites.[5][6][7] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1054 | Software Configuration |
Use anti-spoofing and email authentication mechanisms to filter messages based on validity checks of the sender domain (using SPF) and integrity of messages (using DKIM). Enabling these mechanisms within an organization (through policies such as DMARC) may enable recipients (intra-org and cross domain) to perform similar message filtering and validation.[8][9] |
| M1017 | User Training |
Users can be trained to identify social engineering techniques and spearphishing attempts. |
| ID | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0015 | Application Log | Application Log Content |
Monitor for suspicious email activity, such as numerous accounts receiving messages from a single unusual/unknown sender. Filtering based on DKIM+SPF or header analysis can help detect when the email sender is spoofed.[8][9] |
| 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)). |
| 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. |