Cyber Threat Report: 'People's Republic of China State-Sponsored Cyber Actor Living off the Land to Evade Detection'

This advisory from the US National Security Agency, CISA and various other agencies outlines tactics, techniques and procedures used by Volt Typhoon in attacking US critical infrastructure sectors. In particular, the report calls out the actor's use of living-off-the-land techniques to avoid detection.

Network Intrusion Prevention

Use intrusion detection signatures to block traffic at network boundaries.

Filter Network Traffic

Use network appliances to filter ingress or egress traffic and perform protocol-based filtering. Configure software on endpoints to filter network traffic.

SSL/TLS Inspection

Break and inspect SSL/TLS sessions to look at encrypted web traffic for adversary activity.

Privileged Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to privileged accounts, including SYSTEM and root.

Password Policies

Set and enforce secure password policies for accounts.

Privileged Process Integrity

Protect processes with high privileges that can be used to interact with critical system components through use of protected process light, anti-process injection defenses, or other process integrity enforcement measures.

Operating System Configuration

Make configuration changes related to the operating system or a common feature of the operating system that result in system hardening against techniques.

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Use capabilities to prevent suspicious behavior patterns from occurring on endpoint systems. This could include suspicious process, file, API call, etc. behavior.

User Training

Train users to be aware of access or manipulation attempts by an adversary to reduce the risk of successful spearphishing, social engineering, and other techniques that involve user interaction.

Active Directory Configuration

Configure Active Directory to prevent use of certain techniques; use SID Filtering, etc.

Encrypt Sensitive Information

Protect sensitive information with strong encryption.

Credential Access Protection

Use capabilities to prevent successful credential access by adversaries; including blocking forms of credential dumping.

Account Use Policies

Configure features related to account use like login attempt lockouts, specific login times, etc.

Multi-factor Authentication

Use two or more pieces of evidence to authenticate to a system; such as username and password in addition to a token from a physical smart card or token generator.

User Account Management

Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts.

Remote Data Storage

Use remote security log and sensitive file storage where access can be controlled better to prevent exposure of intrusion detection log data or sensitive information.

Restrict File and Directory Permissions

Restrict access by setting directory and file permissions that are not specific to users or privileged accounts.

Disable or Remove Feature or Program

Remove or deny access to unnecessary and potentially vulnerable software to prevent abuse by adversaries.

Execution Prevention

Block execution of code on a system through application control, and/or script blocking.

Code Signing

Enforce binary and application integrity with digital signature verification to prevent untrusted code from executing.

Antivirus/Antimalware

Use signatures or heuristics to detect malicious software.

Application Isolation and Sandboxing

Restrict execution of code to a virtual environment on or in transit to an endpoint system.

Exploit Protection

Use capabilities to detect and block conditions that may lead to or be indicative of a software exploit occurring.

Vulnerability Scanning

Vulnerability scanning is used to find potentially exploitable software vulnerabilities to remediate them.

Update Software

Perform regular software updates to mitigate exploitation risk.

Network Segmentation

Architect sections of the network to isolate critical systems, functions, or resources. Use physical and logical segmentation to prevent access to potentially sensitive systems and information. Use a DMZ to contain any internet-facing services...