T1481.001 Dead Drop Resolver — Detection Rules

Source-backed rule directory

No reviewed association in this snapshot.

Atlas deterministic concepts

No exact concept selected.

Anomaly models

No exact Atlas model in this snapshot.

ATT&CK analytic guidance

DET0617 Detection of Dead Drop Resolver

AN1675 Analytic 1675

The defender correlates an app-attributed request to a legitimate public web platform with a subsequent outbound connection to a newly derived or previously unseen destination within a short time window. The behavior is strengthened when the initial request retrieves structured or encoded content followed by a pivot to a different domain or IP that was not previously contacted by the app, especially when occurring without user interaction, in background state, or immediately after app initialization or scheduled execution. This sequence reflects resolver retrieval followed by dynamic C2 resolution.

AN1676 Analytic 1676

The defender correlates a supervised-device or managed-app request to a legitimate web platform with a subsequent connection to a newly derived destination that is not part of the expected service interaction. Because iOS has weaker app-level telemetry, the strongest signal is a network-level sequence where a request to a known public platform is immediately followed by a connection to a different domain or IP, particularly when the device is locked, no recent user interaction occurred, and the bundle is not expected to interact with such downstream infrastructure.