CyberStack

MITRE ATT&CK / Techniques / T1570

Lateral Tool Transfer

ID
T1570
Tactics
TA0008 Lateral Movement
Platforms
ESXi, Linux, macOS, Windows
Data sources
Network Share Access, File Creation, Process Creation, Command Execution, File Metadata
Source
attack.mitre.org
MITRE last modified
4 Sep 2026

Adversaries may transfer tools or other files between systems in a compromised environment. Once brought into the victim environment (i.e., Ingress Tool Transfer) files may then be copied from one system to another to stage adversary tools or other files over the course of an operation.

Adversaries may copy files between internal victim systems to support lateral movement using inherent file sharing protocols such as file sharing over SMB/Windows Admin Shares to connected network shares or with authenticated connections via Remote Desktop Protocol.[3]

Files can also be transferred using native or otherwise present tools on the victim system, such as scp, rsync, curl, sftp, and ftp. In some cases, adversaries may be able to leverage Web Services such as Dropbox or OneDrive to copy files from one machine to another via shared, automatically synced folders.[4]

Detection

Mitigations (2)

M1031 Network Intrusion Prevention

Network intrusion detection and prevention systems that use network signatures to identify traffic for specific adversary malware or unusual data transfer over known tools and protocols like FTP can be used to mitigate activity at the network level. Signatures are often for unique indicators within protocols and may be based on the specific obfuscation technique used by a particular adversary or tool, and will likely be different across various malware families and versions. [1]

M1037 Filter Network Traffic

Consider using the host firewall to restrict file sharing communications such as SMB. [2]

Groups (19)

Software (27)

References

  1. University of Birmingham C2
  2. Microsoft Preventing SMB
  3. Unit42 LockerGoga 2019
  4. Dropbox Malware Sync