What makes MITRE ATT&CK more relevant than ever?
This globally-recognized and -accessible yet vastly underutilized knowledge base is gaining its momentum as waves of cybersecurity breaches continue to assault organizations worldwide. Based on real-world observations, the framework was developed by the non-profit foundation, MITRE Corporation, to document and track different tactics and techniques used by attackers in various stages of infiltrating a network and exfiltrating data.
As the most extensive, comprehensive, accurate, and complete knowledge base, this framework provides public, private, and non-profit organizations with a structured, data-driven approach to validate security controls and realize gaps to expand security management through remediation.
As of the first week of 2024, internet users worldwide discovered 612 new common IT security vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs)
One-Third of High-Risk Vulnerabilities Found in Network Infrastructure & Web Applications
72 occurrences took place in enterprise environments and 24 in industrial control systems (ICS).
89% of organizations use the MITRE ATT&CK framework for various security operations use cases
Adversarial
Tactics
Techniques
Common
Knowledge
Make It the Core of Your Security Workflow
If you wonder why your security controls are unable to stop attacks or see similar attacks evading your security measures successfully despite having a workflow in place, the answer might lie in not having a system that understands the organization’s threat intelligence well and translates it into the right actions.
However, when you build your security workflow using the ATTACK framework as its core component, you create a robust framework that understands and derives critical insights from the organization’s threat intelligence. The framework synthesizes all the data and threat intelligence to find answers to the three most fundamental questions: location of attacker, motivation of attacker, objective of attacker.
In addition, the framework also prevents adversaries from abusing system services to execute commands remotely, perform remote service manipulation or conduct remote execution of malicious programs. Windows service control manager is one of the system services that are often used to execute malicious commands as it enables managing or modifying services and newly constructed services, such as in Windows services. Apart from the service control manager API, other service execution tools such as PsExec are also commonly leveraged for service execution.
Enterprises can also detect and block situations that indicate a software exploit through the mitigation techniques suggested in the framework. For e.g. features like Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) or Microsoft Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) can be utilized to prevent similar methods or thwart application control. Enable attack surface reduction
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Key Challenges in Leveraging MITRE ATT&CK
While the framework offers immense help in understanding adversaries and their strategic ways of invading a system, enterprises often face great challenges in implementing the framework due to its large and complex nature as well as extremely detailed permutations of data. Lack of automation in processing this massive amount of data and mapping it against an organization’s security infrastructure is another daunting task that prevents organizations from fully utilizing this universal framework.
Not all techniques are always malicious. How to realize the same, minimize alerts, and prioritize threats
Not all techniques are easy to detect. How to implement cutting-edge tools to detect and hunt for deep, lurking threats
Some techniques have many possible methods of execution. How to use sub-techniques to address this.
Some techniques are listed under multiple tactics which can be used for multiple use cases and are useful in multiple stages of attack
Maximize the Value with Cloud4C
At Cloud4C, the world's leading application-focused managed cloud services partner and a leading cybersecurity partner, we leverage the ATTACK framework to make every security solution intelligent and objective-oriented in order to outmaneuver adversaries and maximize threat intelligence. Here's a strategic way we use the framework to ensure better threat detection and advanced defense against the constantly evolving threat actors:
Map
defense
Understand
gaps
Improve threat
detection
Streamline
investigation
Share threat
intelligence
Improve
pentesting
Create adversary
simulation
Map
defense
Understand
gaps
Improve threat
detection
Streamline
investigation
Share threat
intelligence
Improve
pentesting
Create adversary
simulation
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List of use cases (backlog)
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Prioritizing
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Use Case for
Prototyping -
Prototyping
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Validation
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Success
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Ideas
Decode Attacker Tactics: Understand the Strategic Goal of an Attacker
The first critical step in building a defense against adversaries is to understand the intention or the strategic goal of a threat actor. It can be extorting ransom, stealing highly sensitive data, or simply destroying an IT environment. To achieve the goal, an attacker plans a number of short-term goals starting with gaining initial access to lateral movement or command and control. Here’s a classification of several tactics used by attackers described by the framework to help understand the intent of the attacker:
Tactic
- Reconnaissance
- Resource development
- Initial access
- Execution
- Persistence
- Privilege escalation
- Defense evasion
- Credential access
- Discovery
- Lateral movement
- Collection
- Command and control
- Exfiltration
- Impact
- Gather critical information for future operations
- Establish resources to support future operations
- Enter/invade the network
- Run malicious code
- Maintain their foothold
- Gain higher-level permissions
- Stay undetected
- Steal credentials
- Figure out the environment
- Move through the environment
- Gather data of interest to their goal
- Communicate with compromised systems to control them
- Steal data
- Manipulate, interrupt, or destroy the system and/or data
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Identifying the Top Use Cases
This global database of threat intelligence can be leveraged in a number of ways. Here are the six key use cases for the intelligence contained with the framework:
Threat emulation
Red teaming or pentesting
Behavioral analytics
development
Defensive gap
assessment
SOC maturity assessment
Cyber threat intelligence
enrichment
How Can Cloud4C Help: Advanced Management, Detection and Response
Cloud4C leverages the ATTACK framework to enable faster threat management, detection and response (MDR) across networks, endpoints, applications, and infrastructure. Cloud4C's MDR is an integral part of our comprehensive Managed Security Services. By combining its threat intelligence with advanced automation capabilities, Cloud4C helps enterprises to improve their SOC efficiency, reduce cyber attacks, and respond faster to threats.
Top Security Frameworks
Enablement
Deep Threat Hunting
and Detection
Automated Security
Response
Threat Behavior
Analytics
Advanced Threat
Intelligence
Identity and Access
Management
Endpoint Security
Management
Cloud Security
Management
Why Partner with Cloud4C for your
Enterprise Cybersecurity Transformation?
World's largest application-focused managed service provider with dedicated Managed Security Services and AI-driven advanced Managed Detection and Response Services
12+ years of expertise, 4000 transformation stories across 26+ nations and 20+ Centers of Excellence
80000 EPS, 13000 HBSS, 3200 UTMs, 7 Reg-tech Frameworks, 40+ Security Controls.
2000+ cloud experts with industry-leading certifications: Hyperscaler Security, Hyperscaler Platform, CISSP, OSCP, CEH, CHFI, Comp TIA Security.
Integration of proprietary, intelligent automation-powered cybersecurity tools such as the Cloud4C Self-Healing Operations Platform.
Specialized compliance management expertise in ensuring stringent, fail-proof governance and compliance with local, national, and international regulations.
Advanced threat detection, proactive threat hunting capabilities with best-of-breed toolset and processes.
24/7 automated threat response and & Management.
Comprehensive Threat Investigation and Verification with advanced Threat Intelligence powered by Industry-leading platforms such as Microsoft, OSINT, STIX&TAXI, MISP, etc. and Cloud4C Threat experts.
Cloud-native security with multi-cloud support for leading cloud platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle, IBM Cloud, etc.
Experience in deploying and managing robust SIEM on AWS Cloud – helping enterprises to proactively assess vulnerabilities and automate and accelerate incident response on the AWS Cloud.
MITRE ATT&CK - FAQs
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What does MITRE ATT&CK stand for?
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MITRE is the name of a non-profit organization, whereas ATT&CK stands for Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge.
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Is it a framework?
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Yes, it is a globally accessible, open framework that offers a wide range of tactics and techniques commonly used by threat actors, red teams, and defenders to improve attack classification and enhance an organization’s risk assessment.
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What is the purpose of the framework?
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The purpose is to enable defenders to assess their defense tactics against specific advanced persistent threats (ATP) across multiple threat actors.
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