If a command is received, the command is carried out and the results of the command are sent back to the Team Server. This bigger component, in many cases, is Beacon.īeacon’s task is to call back to a specified Team Server and ask for commands to be executed.
COBALT STRIKE BEACON COMMANDS CODE
In practice, this often means that an initial exploit (e.g., a remote heap overflow against a service running on the target host) causes the execution of a stager, which is a small piece of code whose task is to download a bigger component and execute it (by saving it to a file and running it, or by injecting this second component in the memory of an existing process). This component is installed on a host as part of the initial breach process to maintain control of the compromised host.
One of the most important components of the Cobalt Strike framework is the Beacon component. Multiple Team Servers might be leveraged during an attack so that various activities (from phishing to initial compromise, to lateral movement) can be associated with different pieces of the infrastructure. The Team Server is the host that directly attacks the target network, and acts has a command-and-control component and team collaboration tool. A Brief Cobalt Strike TutorialĬobalt Strike has a client-server architecture, in which several users (e.g., the members of the red team performing the attack) connect to a Team Server using the Aggressor client application. We believe that this approach could be useful to other practitioners. To this end, we developed a grammar-based approach to the generation of Cobalt Strike configurations and an infrastructure for the automated collection of traffic samples.
One of the challenges associated with the detection of Cobalt Strike command-and-control traffic is the lack of large-scale datasets that can be leveraged for machine learning or statistical analysis. Given its “dual nature” and wide adoption by both sides of the security battlefield, it is not surprising that security teams struggle to develop detection approaches to identify instances of Cobalt-Strike-related traffic, and, in particular, traffic associated with the command-and-control channel to compromised hosts. The tool is so popular that there are Telegram channels and GitHub repositories dedicated to obtaining or producing modified, pirated copies of the Cobalt Strike software. For example, recently Cobalt Strike was used as part of both the SolarWinds supply-chain attack and the ransomware attacks against Colonial Pipeline. Soon, Cobalt Strike was copied, modified, and included in the toolset used in attacks against targets of all kinds. While the goal of Raphael Mudge, the author of Cobalt Strike, was to provide a framework to test network defenses to support the development of effective detection mechanisms and incident response procedures, the power provided by the tools was not lost on malicious actors (see, for example, ). To this end, Cobalt Strike provides several techniques that allow a red team to execute targeted attacks to compromise a target network, established a bridge head on a host, and then move laterally to gain additional access to computers, accounts, and, eventually, data.
Cobalt Strike is a tool to support red teams in attack simulation exercises.
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