T1027.003 · defense-evasion · 8 actors · 0 correlated reports

Steganography

Adversaries may use steganography techniques in order to prevent the detection of hidden information. Steganographic techniques can be used to hide data in digital media such as images, audio tracks, video clips, or text files. Duqu was an early example of malware that used steganography. It encrypted the gathered information from a victim's system and hid it within an image before exfiltrating the image to a C2 server. By the end of 2017, a threat group used Invoke-PSImage to hide PowerShell commands in an image file (.png) and execute the code on a victim's system. In this particular case the PowerShell code downloaded another obfuscated script to gather intelligence from the victim's machine and communicate it back to the adversary.

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Detection logic

Detection of steganography is difficult unless artifacts are left behind by the obfuscation process that are detectable with a known signature. Look for strings or other signatures left in system artifacts related to decoding steganography.

Observed actors

Correlated CTI and IR reports

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