Procedure examples

Small Sieve can use a custom hex byte swapping encoding scheme to obfuscate tasking traffic.

During the 2015 Ukraine Electric Power Attack, Sandworm Team installed a modified Dropbear SSH client as the backdoor to target systems.

During the C0032 campaign, TEMP.Veles used VPN access to persist in the victim environment.

For the SolarWinds Compromise, APT29 used compromised identities to access networks via SSH, VPNs, and other remote access tools.

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"}`.

ArcaneDoor used WebVPN sessions commonly associated with Clientless SSLVPN services to communicate to compromised devices.

During the 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks, threat actors leveraged the FortiGate VPN interface that was exposed to the internet to gain access to the victim environment.

During Night Dragon, threat actors used compromised VPN accounts to gain access to victim systems.

During Operation Wocao, threat actors used stolen credentials to connect to the victim's network via VPN.

During C0027, Scattered Spider used Citrix and VPNs to persist in compromised environments.

During CostaRicto, the threat actors set up remote tunneling using an SSH tool to maintain access to a compromised environment.

GALLIUM has used VPN services, including SoftEther VPN, to access and maintain persistence in victim environments.

Kimsuky has used RDP to establish persistence.

Volt Typhoon has used VPNs to connect to victim environments and enable post-exploitation actions.

APT41 compromised an online billing/payment service using VPN access between a third-party service provider and the targeted payment service.

Dragonfly has used VPNs and Outlook Web Access (OWA) to maintain access to victim networks.

TeamTNT has used open-source tools such as Weave Scope to target exposed Docker API ports and gain initial access to victim environments. TeamTNT has also targeted exposed kubelets for Kubernetes environments.

Sandworm Team has used Dropbear SSH with a hardcoded backdoor password to maintain persistence within the target network. Sandworm Team has also used VPN tunnels established in legitimate software company infrastructure to gain access to internal networks of that software company's users.

APT18 actors leverage legitimate credentials to log into external remote services.

Scattered Spider has leveraged legitimate remote management tools to maintain persistent access.

Akira uses compromised VPN accounts for initial access to victim networks.

OilRig uses remote services such as VPN, Citrix, or OWA to persist in an environment.

Sea Turtle has used external-facing SSH to achieve initial access to the IT environments of victim organizations.

Ke3chang has gained access through VPNs including with compromised accounts and stolen VPN certificates.

Leviathan has used external remote services such as virtual private networks (VPN) to gain initial access.

FIN5 has used legitimate VPN, Citrix, or VNC credentials to maintain access to a victim environment.

APT29 has used compromised identities to access networks via VPNs and Citrix.

Chimera has used legitimate credentials to login to an external VPN, Citrix, SSH, and other remote services.

Ember Bear have used VPNs both for initial access to victim environments and for persistence within them following compromise.

APT28 has used Tor and a variety of commercial VPN services to route brute force authentication attempts.

APT-C-36 has used VPNs in their operational infrastructure.

GOLD SOUTHFIELD has used publicly-accessible RDP and remote management and monitoring (RMM) servers to gain access to victim machines.

LAPSUS$ 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.

Wizard Spider has accessed victim networks by using stolen credentials to access the corporate VPN infrastructure.

Velvet Ant has leveraged access to internet-facing remote services to compromise and retain access to victim environments.

VOID MANTICORE has leveraged public facing VPN infrastructure to gain initial access to victim environments.

Play has used Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) for initial access.

Threat Group-3390 actors look for and use VPN profiles during an operation to access the network using external VPN services. Threat Group-3390 has also obtained OWA account credentials during intrusions that it subsequently used to attempt to regain access when evicted from a victim network.

FIN13 has gained access to compromised environments via remote access services such as the corporate virtual private network (VPN).

Linux Rabbit attempts to gain access to the server via SSH.

Mafalda can establish an SSH connection from a compromised host to a server.

Hildegard was executed through an unsecure kubelet that allowed anonymous access to the victim environment.

Doki was executed through an open Docker daemon API port.

Kinsing was executed in an Ubuntu container deployed via an open Docker daemon API.

During C0017, APT41 used a ConfuserEx obfuscated BADPOTATO exploit to abuse named-pipe impersonation for local `NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM` privilege escalation.

FIN6 has used has used Metasploit’s named-pipe impersonation technique to escalate privileges.

Blue Mockingbird has used JuicyPotato to abuse the SeImpersonate token privilege to escalate from web application pool accounts to NT Authority\SYSTEM.

Lotus Blossom has retrieved process tokens for processes to adjust the privileges of the launch process or other items.

AppleSeed can gain system level privilege by passing SeDebugPrivilege to the AdjustTokenPrivilege API.

SslMM contains a feature to manipulate process privileges and tokens.