Remote Service Session Hijacking: SSH Hijacking (T1563.001)

Tactic: Lateral Movement · Platforms: Linux, macOS

The interactive view maps 1 detection strategy, 4 mitigations, 1 software entry to this technique, alongside D3FEND countermeasures and data-component coverage.

Sub-technique of Remote Service Session Hijacking (T1563).

Overview

Adversaries may hijack a legitimate user's SSH session to move laterally within an environment. Secure Shell (SSH) is a standard means of remote access on Linux and macOS systems. It allows a user to connect to another system via an encrypted tunnel, commonly authenticating through a password, certificate or the use of an asymmetric encryption key pair.

In order to move laterally from a compromised host, adversaries may take advantage of trust relationships established with other systems via public key authentication in active SSH sessions by hijacking an existing connection to another system. This may occur through compromising the SSH agent itself or by having access to the agent's socket. If an adversary is able to obtain root access, then hijacking SSH sessions is likely trivial.

SSH Hijacking differs from use of SSH because it hijacks an existing SSH session rather than creating a new session using Valid Accounts.

Explore

• Open T1563.001 in the interactive ATT&CK matrix
• ATT&CK Intelligence View guide
• Official MITRE ATT&CK entry for T1563.001
• Sigma detection rules for MITRE ATT&CK
• Built by Shahrukh Khan