Detect Archive Collected Data in Elastic Security
Adversaries may compress and/or encrypt data that is collected prior to exfiltration. Compressing the data can help to obfuscate collected data and minimize the amount of data sent over the network. Encryption can be used to hide information that is being exfiltrated from detection or make exfiltration less conspicuous upon inspection by a defender. Both compression and encryption are done prior to exfiltration and can be performed using a utility, third-party library, or custom method. Common tools include 7-Zip, WinRAR, the Windows built-in compact and certutil utilities, PowerShell Compress-Archive and .NET IO.Compression classes, and tar/gzip/openssl on Linux and macOS. Threat actors including Dragonfly, Lazarus Group, Ember Bear, BlackByte, and Axiom have all used archiving and encryption as a pre-exfiltration staging step. Sub-techniques cover archive via utility (T1560.001), archive via library (T1560.002), and archive via custom method (T1560.003).
MITRE ATT&CK
- Tactic
- Collection
- Technique
- T1560 Archive Collected Data
- Canonical reference
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1560/
Elastic Detection Query
process where event.type == "start" and
(
(
process.name : ("7z.exe", "7za.exe", "7zr.exe", "rar.exe", "winrar.exe") and
process.command_line : ("* -hp*", "* -pass*", "* -password*", "* -p?*")
) or
(
process.name : ("7z.exe", "7za.exe", "7zr.exe", "rar.exe", "winrar.exe") and
process.parent.name : ("winword.exe", "excel.exe", "outlook.exe", "powerpnt.exe",
"mshta.exe", "wscript.exe", "cscript.exe",
"mmc.exe", "regsvr32.exe", "rundll32.exe")
) or
(
process.name : ("powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe") and
process.command_line : ("*Compress-Archive*", "*IO.Compression.ZipFile*",
"*IO.Compression.GZipStream*", "*System.IO.Compression*",
"*ZipArchive*", "*DeflateStream*", "*GZipStream*")
) or
(
process.name : "certutil.exe" and
process.command_line : ("*-encode*", "*-decode*", "*-encodehex*")
)
)Detects T1560 Archive Collected Data behaviors using Elastic EQL against Endpoint/Sysmon process telemetry. Covers four sub-patterns: (1) password-protected archive creation with 7z/RAR (-hp/-pass flags), (2) archive utilities spawned directly by Office apps or scripting engines indicating macro/script-based staging, (3) PowerShell leveraging .NET IO.Compression classes for library-based archiving, and (4) CertUtil base64 encoding used to obfuscate binary blobs for text-channel exfiltration.
Data Sources
Required Tables
False Positives & Tuning
- Legitimate enterprise backup software (Acronis, Veeam, BackupExec) that invokes 7-Zip or RAR with password-protected archives as part of scheduled backup jobs — baseline by parent process and scheduled task context
- IT deployment pipelines (SCCM, Ansible, Chocolatey) that use PowerShell Compress-Archive to bundle software packages before distribution — correlate with known software deployment service accounts
- Security certificate management workflows where certutil.exe is used to encode PEM/DER certificates for transport — validate against known PKI infrastructure hosts and service accounts
- Developer CI/CD pipelines invoking 7-Zip from build scripts with passwords to protect release artifacts — these may appear as child processes of scripting engines but originate from build agents
Other platforms for T1560
Testing Methodology
Validate this detection against 5 adversary techniques from Atomic Red Team. Each test below lists the behaviour to exercise and the telemetry you should expect to see. Executable commands and cleanup steps are available with Pro.
- Test 17-Zip Password-Protected Archive of Sensitive Directory
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 1: Process Create with Image ending in 7z.exe, CommandLine containing '-hp' and 'staged_exfil.zip'. Sysmon Event ID 11: File Create event for C:\Windows\Temp\staged_exfil.zip with InitiatingProcessFileName=7z.exe. Security Event ID 4688 (if process command line auditing enabled) with same details.
- Test 2PowerShell Compress-Archive Staging in Temp Directory
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 1: Process Create with Image=powershell.exe, CommandLine containing 'Compress-Archive' and 'C:\Windows\Temp\recent_files_staged.zip'. Sysmon Event ID 11: File Create for the zip archive. PowerShell ScriptBlock Log Event ID 4104 in Microsoft-Windows-PowerShell/Operational with full cmdlet and path.
- Test 3certutil Base64 Encode Binary File
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 1: Process Create with Image=certutil.exe, CommandLine containing '-encode' and 'encoded_payload.txt'. Sysmon Event ID 11: File Create for C:\Windows\Temp\encoded_payload.txt. Security Event ID 4688 with the same certutil command line if process auditing is enabled.
- Test 4Linux tar + gzip Collection and Staging
Expected signal: Auditd execve record: type=EXECVE with argv containing 'tar' 'czf' '/tmp/sys_backup_...' '/etc/passwd' '/etc/shadow'. Syslog process creation record (if auditd not deployed). File creation event for /tmp/sys_backup_*.tar.gz. If using a SIEM with Linux file integrity monitoring, alert on new file creation in /tmp matching *.tar.gz by root or privileged account.
- Test 5WinRAR Archive with Password and Locked Headers
Expected signal: Sysmon Event ID 1: Process Create with Image ending rar.exe, CommandLine containing '-hp' and 'staging.rar'. Sysmon Event ID 11: File Create for C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\staging.rar with InitiatingProcessFileName=rar.exe. Security Event ID 4688 with full command line.
References (13)
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1560/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1560/001/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1560/002/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1560/003/
- https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/master/atomics/T1560/T1560.md
- https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/master/atomics/T1560.001/T1560.001.md
- https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2018/images/07/13/gru.indictment.pdf
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/advanced-hunting-deviceprocessevents-table
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/defender-endpoint/advanced-hunting-devicefileevents-table
- https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/AA18-074A_MAR-10135536-G.PDF
- https://securelist.com/toddycat-check-logs/110696/
- https://www.cybereason.com/blog/threat-analysis-report-bumblebee-loader-the-high-road-to-enterprise-domain-control
- https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/tree/master/rules/windows/process_creation
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