T1205.001: Port Knocking
| View on MITRE ATT&CK | T1205.001 |
|---|---|
| Tactic(s) | Persistence, Defense Evasion, Command and Control |
Data from MITRE ATT&CK®:
Adversaries may use port knocking to hide open ports used for persistence or command and control. To enable a port, an adversary sends a series of attempted connections to a predefined sequence of closed ports. After the sequence is completed, opening a port is often accomplished by the host based firewall, but could also be implemented by custom software.
This technique has been observed both for the dynamic opening of a listening port as well as the initiating of a connection to a listening server on a different system.
The observation of the signal packets to trigger the communication can be conducted through different methods. One means, originally implemented by Cd00r (Citation: Hartrell cd00r 2002), is to use the libpcap libraries to sniff for the packets in question. Another method leverages raw sockets, which enables the malware to use ports that are already open for use by other programs.
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Cyber Threat Graph Context
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Mitigations for this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Mitigations
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MITRE ATT&CK Data Components
Network Connection Creation (Network Traffic)
Initial construction of a network connection, such as capturing socket information with a source/destination IP and port(s) (ex: Windows EID 5156, Sysmon EID 3, or Zeek conn.log)Network Traffic Flow (Network Traffic)
Summarized network packet data, with metrics, such as protocol headers and volume (ex: Netflow or Zeek http.log)SP800-53 Controls
See which controls can help protect against this MITRE ATT&CK technique. This is based on mappings to associated SP800-53 controls produced by the MITRE Engenuity Center for Threat-Informed Defense.