SSL/TLS inspection involves decrypting encrypted network traffic to examine its content for signs of malicious activity. This capability is crucial for detecting threats that use encryption to evade detection, such as phishing, malware, or data exfiltration. After inspection, the traffic is re-encrypted and forwarded to its destination. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures: Deploy SSL/TLS Inspection Appliances: - Implement SSL/TLS inspection solutions to decrypt and inspect encrypted traffic. - Ensure appliances are placed at critical network choke points for maximum coverage. Configure Decryption Policies: - Define rules to decrypt traffic for specific applications, ports, or domains. - Avoid decrypting sensitive or privacy-related traffic, such as financial or healthcare websites, to comply with regulations. Integrate Threat Intelligence: - Use threat inte…
MITRE mitigation sourceAdversaryGraph public intelligence page
This page is part of Threat Matrix, the public browser workspace for the main AdversaryGraph platform. Use it for ATT&CK pivots, actor and technique context, similarity leads, detection coverage review, and analyst-ready investigation paths.
Validation disclaimer: TTP overlap, actor similarity, generated summaries, and coverage findings are investigation leads, not attribution proof or operational validation without analyst review.
Main AdversaryGraph project Documentation Malware Analysis GitHub
Domain Fronting
Adversaries may take advantage of routing schemes in Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and other services which host multiple domains to obfuscate the intended destination of HTTPS traffic or traffic tunneled through HTTPS. Domain fronting involves using different domain names in the SNI field of the TLS header and the Host field of the HTTP header. If both domains are served from the same CDN, then the CDN may route to the address specified in the HTTP header after unwrapping the TLS header. A variation of the the technique, "domainless" fronting, utilizes a SNI field that is left blank; this may allow the fronting to work even when the CDN attempts to validate that the SNI and HTTP Host fields match (if the blank SNI fields are ignored). For example, if domain-x and domain-y are customers of the same CDN, it is possible to place domain-x in the TLS header and domain-y in the HTTP header. Traffic will appear to be going to domain-x, however the CDN may route it to domain-y.
Open detection, hunting, mitigation, and evidence workspace
Detection logic
If SSL inspection is in place or the traffic is not encrypted, the Host field of the HTTP header can be checked if it matches the HTTPS SNI or against a blocklist or allowlist of domain names.
Observed actors
Correlated CTI and IR reports
Cyber Knowledge context
Use these routes to move from the ATT&CK behavior into explanation, implementation, evidence handling, validation, and defensive operations. Relevance is generated from explicit identifiers/names and governed topic mappings; it is not attribution evidence.
Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) · Tactic learning route · 24/100Disassembly, decompilation, and code-led analysis
Malware Analysis & Reverse Engineering · Tactic learning route · 24/100Module 5 — Threat hunting
Blue Team & Defensive Security · Tactic learning route · 24/100
MITRE mitigations
MITRE detection strategies and analytics
- AN0564 · Analytic 0564 — Suspicious outbound HTTPS connections where the TLS Server Name Indication (SNI) does not match the HTTP Host header, indicating potential use of domain fronting to mask C2 traffic via CDNs.
- AN0565 · Analytic 0565 — Applications such as `curl`, `wget`, or custom binaries initiate HTTPS connections where the TLS SNI is mismatched or absent while HTTP Host targets CDN-available C2 endpoints.
- AN0566 · Analytic 0566 — Unsigned or user-space apps initiate TLS connections with one hostname and HTTP headers requesting a different domain, commonly abused in CDN-resident domain fronting techniques.
- AN0567 · Analytic 0567 — Traffic originating from ESXi hosts or management interfaces displays SNI-to-Host mismatch behavior, particularly anomalous given typical infrastructure communication patterns.