Technique:  External Remote Services
During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, It installed a modified Dropbear SSH client as the backdoor to target systems.
It actors leverage legitimate credentials to log into external remote services.
It has used Tor and a variety of commercial VPN services to route brute force authentication attempts.
It has used compromised identities to access networks via VPNs and Citrix.
It compromised an online billing/payment service using VPN access between a third-party service provider and the targeted payment service.
During C0027, It used Citrix and VPNs to persist in compromised environments.
It has used legitimate credentials to login to an external VPN, Citrix, SSH, and other remote services.
During CostaRicto, the threat actors set up remote tunneling using an SSH tool to maintain access to a compromised environment.
Doki was executed through an open Docker daemon API port.
It has used VPNs and Outlook Web Access (OWA) to maintain access to victim networks.
It has gained access to compromised environments via remote access services such as the corporate virtual private network (VPN).
It has used legitimate VPN, Citrix, or VNC credentials to maintain access to a victim environment.
It has used VPN services, including SoftEther VPN, to access and maintain persistence in victim environments.
It has used publicly-accessible RDP and remote management and monitoring (RMM) servers to gain access to victim machines.
Hildegard was executed through an unsecure kubelet that allowed anonymous access to the victim environment.
It has gained access through VPNs including with compromised accounts and stolen VPN certificates.
It has used RDP to establish persistence.
Kinsing was executed in an Ubuntu container deployed via an open Docker daemon API.
It has gained access to internet-facing systems and applications, including virtual private network (VPN), remote desktop protocol (RDP), and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) including Citrix.
It has used external remote services such as virtual private networks (VPN) to gain initial access.
Linux Rabbit attempts to gain access to the server via SSH.
Mafalda can establish an SSH connection from a compromised host to a server.
During Night Dragon, threat actors used compromised VPN accounts to gain access to victim systems.
It uses remote services such as VPN, Citrix, or OWA to persist in an environment.
During Operation CuckooBees, the threat actors enabled WinRM over HTTP/HTTPS as a backup persistence mechanism using the following command: cscript //nologo "C:\Windows\System32\winrm.vbs" set winrm/config/service@{EnableCompatibilityHttpsListener="true"}.
During Operation Wocao, threat actors used stolen credentials to connect to the victim's network via VPN.
It has used Dropbear SSH with a hardcoded backdoor password to maintain persistence within the target network. It has also used VPN tunnels established in legitimate software company infrastructure to gain access to internal networks of that software company's users.
It has leveraged legitimate remote management tools to maintain persistent access.
For the SolarWinds Compromise, It used compromised identities to access networks via SSH, VPNs, and other remote access tools.
It has used open-source tools such as Weave Scope to target exposed Docker API ports and gain initial access to victim environments. It has also targeted exposed kubelets for Kubernetes environments.
It has used a VPN to persist in the victim environment.
It actors look for and use VPN profiles during an operation to access the network using external VPN services. It has also obtained OWA account credentials during intrusions that it subsequently used to attempt to regain access when evicted from a victim network.
It has accessed victim networks by using stolen credentials to access the corporate VPN infrastructure.