CyberStack

MITRE ATT&CK / Techniques / T1048.003

Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted Non-C2 Protocol

ID
T1048.003
Tactics
TA0010 Exfiltration
Sub-technique of
T1048 Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol
Platforms
ESXi, Linux, macOS, Network Devices, Windows
Data sources
Network Connection Creation, Process Creation, File Access, Network Traffic Content, Network Traffic Flow, Command Execution
Source
attack.mitre.org
MITRE last modified
4 Sep 2026

Adversaries may steal data by exfiltrating it over an un-encrypted network protocol other than that of the existing command and control channel. The data may also be sent to an alternate network location from the main command and control server.[2]

Adversaries may opt to obfuscate this data, without the use of encryption, within network protocols that are natively unencrypted (such as HTTP, FTP, or DNS). This may include custom or publicly available encoding/compression algorithms (such as base64) as well as embedding data within protocol headers and fields.

Detection

Mitigations (4)

M1030 Network Segmentation

Follow best practices for network firewall configurations to allow only necessary ports and traffic to enter and exit the network.[1]

M1031 Network Intrusion Prevention

Network intrusion detection and prevention systems that use network signatures to identify traffic for specific adversary command and control infrastructure and malware can be used to mitigate activity at the network level.

M1037 Filter Network Traffic

Enforce proxies and use dedicated servers for services such as DNS and only allow those systems to communicate over respective ports/protocols, instead of all systems within a network.

M1057 Data Loss Prevention

Data loss prevention can detect and block sensitive data being sent over unencrypted protocols.

Groups (11)

Software (22)

References

  1. TechNet Firewall Design
  2. copy_cmd_cisco