ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Adversary-in-the-Middle T1557

Adversaries may attempt to position themselves between two or more networked devices using an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) technique to support follow-on behaviors such as Network Sniffing, Transmitted Data Manipulation, or replay attacks (Exploitation for Credential Access). By abusing features of common networking protocols that can determine the flow of network traffic (e.g. ARP, DNS, LLMNR, etc.), adversaries may force a device to communicate through an adversary controlled system so they can collect information or perform additional actions.

Events covered

11 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon11FileCreate
Sysmon22DNSEvent (DNS query)
Security-Auditing4624An account was successfully logged on.
Security-Auditing4625An account failed to log on.
Security-Auditing4662An operation was performed on an object.
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.
Security-Auditing4697A service was installed in the system.
Security-Auditing5137A directory service object was created.
Security-Auditing5145A network share object was checked to see whether client can be granted desired access.
Iphlpsvc4100ISATAP router address IsatapRouter was set with status ErrorCode.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 14 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.

Fields filtered most (22 distinct)

The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.

FieldRulesHowSample values
source.ip5ne 4, cidr_match 1::1, 127.0.0.1, ::, 127.0.0.0/8
AuthenticationPackageName4eq 4NTLM, Kerberos
user4ends_with 4, ne 1$
LogonType4eq 4Network, network
Image4ends_with 4\gup.exe, \secedit.exe, \pwsh.exe, \mshta.exe, \powershell.exe
ObjectDN3starts_with 2, wildcard 1DC=*,, *UWhRC*BAAAA*MicrosoftDNS*, DC=wpad,
computer_name3starts_with 3
file.name2eq 2efsrpc, FssagentRpc, eventlog
CommandLine2match 2/cfg, /export, /db, forfiles, wget
ObjectClass1eq 1dnsNode
host.name1starts_with 1
AdditionalInfo1wildcard 1*UWhRC*BAAAA*MicrosoftDNS*
EventType1eq 1logged-in, service-installed
event.outcome1eq 1success
process_id1eq 10

Top indicator values (81 distinct)

Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
source.ipne::147
userends_with$418
source.ipne127.0.0.148
LogonTypeeqNetwork24
AuthenticationPackageNameeqNTLM22
file.nameeqsamr2
file.nameeqdnsserver2
file.nameeqdhcpserver2
file.nameeqefsrpc2
file.nameeqsrvsvc2
file.nameeqlsass2
file.nameeqnetdfs2
file.nameeqSpoolss2
AuthenticationPackageNameeqKerberos22
file.nameeqnetlogon2
file.nameeqFssagentRpc2
file.nameeqwinreg2
file.nameeqWinsPipe2
LogonTypeeqnetwork2
file.nameeqlsarpc2

Common exclusions (1 distinct)

Field/operator/value combinations that rules under this technique routinely exclude (top-level not() clauses). These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
userends_with$1

Rules under this technique

Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.

Sigma 5 rules

Elastic 9 rules