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The MITRE ATT&CK framework offers a structured way to understand the behaviour of cyber attackers by identifying their tactics, techniques, and procedures.
But if you have no visibility into adversary behaviour or no idea about how effective your security measures are against advanced threats your organisation is likely to face, you are at risk.
With MITRE ATTT&CK data, you can map adversarial behaviour with your current defences to understand where you lack. You can also create cyber threat modelling and apply better security solutions to secure your systems and data.
The MITRE ATT&CK (Adversarial Tactics, Techniques, and Common Knowledge) framework is a globally recognised and accessible knowledge base. It contains the real-world tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that cyber attackers use to carry out an attack.
MITRE ATT&CK helps you understand the “why” and “how” behind an attack by looking at its tactics when it’s still progressing, instead of analysing the indicators of compromise (IoS) that basically tell the impact of an attack. So, it gives you a proactive way to respond to an attack.
Organisations across the world can use the MITRE framework as a tool to understand the complete attack lifecycle and the methods they use in each stage. This helps them analyse the gaps in their security measures, fix those gaps, and improve their threat detection and response (TDR) capabilities and security posture. MITRE ATT&CK also guides government and private organisations, including cybersecurity products and service providers, to develop threat models, benchmark and improve their cyber attack mitigation strategies, and safeguard their data and systems from cyber threats.
The Backstory
It’s time for a little backstory about the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
MITRE, a non-profit organisation created the MITRE ATT&CK framework in 2013 to solve security challenges and improve cybersecurity. Originally, MITRE developed the ATT&CK framework for one of its research projects. It collected the tactics, techniques, procedures and common knowledge about adversaries, hence the name “ATT&CK”. At that time, it only focused on securing Windows systems
It was only in 2015 that MITRE released the database to the public. Now, anyone can access this valuable data free of cost and safeguard themselves from cyber threats. Apart from Windows, MITRE ATT&CK now covers industrial control (ICS), Linux, macOS, and mobile systems. It continuously enriches and updates the knowledge base with data from real-world observations, such as evolving cyber attacks, the latest trends, advanced security solutions, best practices, and more for better security.
What Is the MITRE ATT&CK Matrix?
MITRE ATT&CK matrix is a format that shows adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures covered in the MITRE ATT&CK framework in a Kanban-like board or matrix. This matrix lists all 14 tactics in the top bar while their respective techniques and sub-techniques are written under them.
It differs from the MITRE framework in terms of visualisation. The MITRE ATT&CK matrix takes the same information from the framework but shows it in a matrix format.
Here’s how tactics, techniques, and sub-techniques look like from the official website of MITRE ATT&CK:
MITRE ATT&CK has three matrices. Each one of them familiarises you with attackers’ behaviours and patterns in different environments. Let’s understand them to protect your assets everywhere, regardless of the environment.
Enterprise Matrix
Among the three ATT&CK matrices, the Enterprise matrix is the most detailed one. It offers details on various threat actors, their objectives, threat detection methods and tools they use, how they work, and how you can detect and prevent those threats. It lists all the 14 tactics along with various techniques and sub-techniques attackers implement to infiltrate Linux, macOS, and Windows systems. The matrix also guides you to protect your cloud resources, containers, and network from threats.
The ICS matrix covers 12 tactics:
In addition to common techniques and sub-techniques, the Enterprise matrix covers additional categories that are specific to enterprises, such as social engineering attacks, advanced persistent threats (APTs), fileless malware, DDoS attacks, etc. that traditional systems often can’t protect against.
Mobile Matrix
As the name suggests, the Mobile matrix focuses on guiding security professionals on how to protect against threats targeting mobile devices. These threats could be exploiting app vulnerabilities to gain unauthorised access, targeting operating systems, social engineering, etc.
The Mobile matrix also covers 14 tactics with various techniques and techniques as covered in the original MITRE ATT&CK matrix.
Understanding how these attacks work helps you spot weaknesses in your mobile environments and protect your devices and data.
ICS Matrix
The industrial control system (ICS) matrix focuses on safeguarding industrial systems from cyber threats. It lists various tactics and techniques of attackers to damage, control, and disrupt operational technologies (OT) and processes.
The ICS matrix covers 12 tactics:
Using the insights from the ICS matrix helps security professionals in industries protect their systems and sensitive data. It sheds light on both physical and digital security information for better security control implementations, such as advanced tools and technologies.
Knowing the components of MITRE ATT&CK – adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures enables you to think like an attacker. This helps you build defences that can beat the attacker and secure your organisation. Let's talk about MITRE ATT&CK components:
Tactics
Tactics in a cyberattack are the “why” of a cyber attack. These are an attacker’s high-level objectives behind an attack. It’s the part where you may ask yourself -
Why is an attacker targeting your systems or website?
The answer could be –
The intention could be anything coming from anyone, an external cyberattacker doing it for money or a malicious insider seeking revenge. So, if you figure out the tactics of the attacker, you will know the intentions or objectives behind an attack.
To accomplish their objective, the attacker may want to complete a series of steps. For example, suppose the attacker’s objective is to expose the sensitive data of an organisation to the public or its competitors. To achieve this goal, they will start finding flaws in the system and exploit them to gain unauthorised access to it. This way, they get hold of sensitive data saved on the system and publish it online or sell it to the competitor.
Currently, there are 14 attacker tactics in the Enterprise ATT&CK matrix:
Techniques
Techniques are “how” an attacker achieves their goal through the cyber attack. These are all the methodologies that the attacker uses to carry out the attack. It’s like asking yourself this question -
How did the attacker access my sensitive data?
Or
How did the attacker take down my website?
The reason could be –
Figuring out the techniques helps you understand what went wrong with your systems or network that enabled the attacker to infiltrate your organisation. This is also the reason why you should correct your security posture by implementing safer security solutions, practices, and policies.
In the MITRE ATT&CK matrix, each of the 14 tactics has its own set of techniques and sub-techniques.
Technique: Each technique offers in-depth information on the methods an attacker uses to achieve tactical goals
Sub-technique: Every technique has sub-techniques to provide a more granular understanding of the methods, actions, and tools used to carry out an attack. These can also represent other techniques that attackers can use for the same attack, such as phishing attacks to gain unauthorised access.
For example, suppose an attacker gains initial access to your network. So, their tactic is “initial access”. Now, the technique the attacker may use to gain unauthorised access could be by finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in a system, tracking the user via phishing attacks, guessing the password, and so on. Here, the sub-techniques could be more details on the technique. If the technique is vulnerability exploitation, the sub-technique could be the type of security vulnerability, its root cause, and other details.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework updates continuously to add the latest techniques and sub-techniques from real-world attacks and how they were taken care of. This actionable threat intelligence helps security teams understand and respond to an attack more effectively and secure the organisational infrastructure.
Procedures
Procedures are detailed, step-by-step explanations of how an attacker implemented a specific technique to launch a cyber attack and compromise systems. It can include examples, such as malware, malicious insiders, hacking tools, etc. using that technique.
For example, an attacker may scan for vulnerabilities in a system and exploit them, and inject malicious code into the system to gain unauthorised access to it. This is a procedure. It may contain various sub-techniques, such as sending a phishing email to a user to trick them into downloading malware into a system that will allow the attacker to gain unauthorised access.
Let’s talk about MITRE ATT&CK use cases:
Threat Intelligence
The MITRE ATT&CK framework keeps on updating its knowledge base with the latest data on cyber threats, vulnerabilities, and risks. It covers various tactics and techniques that attackers use to achieve their malicious intent and gives you an in-depth idea of the attack lifecycle at each stage. Whether you use Windows, macOS, Linux, or mobile devices, the framework covers TTPs across various environments.
You can use this open, valuable data to populate your threat intelligence database. It will help you plan out your defences, fix issues, and improve your security posture.
Security Gap Assessment
The MITRE ATT&CK framework gives you a broader view of the adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures of attackers. This means you can understand how an attack happened, what were the attacker’s objectives, what tools and processes they used, and how severe was the impact on your organisation.
You can conduct cyber attack mapping, including adversarial TTPs, to your current security strategies to find out how effective your defences are against those cyber threats. It will also help you identify gaps in your security measures and fix them, such as fixing vulnerabilities, using advanced security solutions, improving access permission policies, and more.
Organisations can also use MITRE ATT&CK’s latest TTPs and data to conduct SOC maturity assessments. This will test how efficient your security operations centre (SOC) is at detecting and addressing cyber threats.
Behaviour Analytics
During a cyber attack, hackers perform a series of activities, such as exploiting vulnerabilities, gaining unauthorised access permissions, moving laterally across the IT infrastructure to compromise more resources, and exfiltrating data. To perform these activities, the hacker uses certain techniques.
You can use the MITRE ATT&CK framework to look for those techniques. It will assist you in analysing user behaviour to be able to detect anomalies or suspicious activities and stop them before they become an attack.
Threat Detection and Response
MITRE ATT&CK gives you an idea of how an attacker carries out an attack – their entry points, what security weaknesses allow them entry, what techniques they used, and how they impacted your business. In addition, it lists the ways you can detect and mitigate those attacks.
You can use this information to investigate security incidents and threats. Just identify the MITRE technique of the attacker and use the ATT&CK matrix to figure out how you can respond to those threats. You can also use the MITRE framework to understand what threat actors and malware samples can do to your organisation. This will help you create a stronger security incident response plan and follow it to respond to threats faster.
Compliance
Compliance standards and regulations, such as HIPAA, GDPR, PCI DSS, SAMA, etc. require you to adhere to their requirements. This is for your own safety. Compliance with these encourages you to adopt more secure practices and solutions to protect your data and systems from threats. But non-compliance could lead to heavy fines, penalties, and legal proceedings that you would want to avoid.
With the MITRE framework, you can gain valuable information to detect and prevent threats, which will help you protect your network, systems, and data. This will help you meet data privacy laws and save you from unnecessary scrutiny by regulations.
Training and Awareness
Organisations can use the MITRE ATT&CK framework to evaluate how effective their security measures, solutions, and policies are against advanced cyber attacks. For this, you can carry out penetration testing, red teaming or blue teaming activities, and cybersecurity tabletop exercises. You can feed the framework’s insights into evaluations and make sure you don’t overlook various attack vectors and techniques.
For example, if you are conducting a red teaming exercise, you can apply the MITRE framework to create realistic-looking or trending scenarios based on real-world attacks and simulate similar adversarial tactics, techniques, and procedures. This will help you test your organisation’s preparedness against advanced attacks and improve weak areas.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework guides your organisation to identify the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) of cyber criminals and improve your security posture.
Let Microminder apply the MITRE framework in your organisation smoothly with our MITRE ATT&CK implementation services. We help you improve your threat detection and response capabilities so you can beat attackers every time. Here’s an overview of how we do it:
Security framework mapping: Threat or adversary mapping with your current defence measures to find gaps and fix them
Customised solutions: Offering fully customised solutions and strategies to meet the requirements of your industry, business size, and risk profile
Advanced capabilities: Providing advanced security solutions, such as XDR, threat hunting, UEBA, IAM, and more
MITRE ATT&CK Training: Conducting effective red/blue teaming, tabletop exercises, and penetration tests to train your security team
Contact us to get started.
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What’s the purpose of MITRE ATT&CK?
The MITRE framework aims to strengthen security posture, aid in proactive cyber defence planning, improve threat detection and response and achieve compliance.Explain MITRE ATT&CK vs Cyber Kill Chain?
Both MITRE ATT&CK and Cyber Kill Chain are security frameworks to improve threat detection and response. The MITRE framework contains a matrix of tactics and techniques but Cyber Kill Chain lists a sequence of events or tactics. Cyber Kill Chain assumes the tactics must be carried out in sequence to succeed. If you block any one of the tactics, the chain will beach and the attack could be prevented. On the other hand, the MITRE framework doesn’t work in this assumption. Instead, it helps you spot adversarial techniques and tactics to prevent them. Cyber Kill Chain is less detailed and covers 7 tactics – Weaponisation, Reconnaissance, Installation, Exploitation, Actions on Objectives, and Command and Control. Comparatively, the MITRE ATT&CK is more detailed and covers 18 tactics.