MITRE last week released version 20 of its ATT&CK framework, adding entries that cover AI abuse, MFA bypass, and recent attacks on water utilities.
The organization says the biggest change in ATT&CK v20 is “expanded coverage of recent adversary activity and tradecraft.”
The Enterprise domain gets nine additions, counting both techniques and sub-techniques. Prompt injection is now tracked as two techniques, one for malicious instructions typed straight into an LLM’s interface and one for instructions hidden in material the model ingests.
Another technique describes attackers using an organization’s own AI agents to steal data. Sub-techniques also cover poisoning web content to sway AI search and assistant recommendations, and disrupting LLM-assisted analysis of malware.
Separately, a new technique tracks the theft of application-specific passwords, which attackers can use to sign in without an MFA prompt. Another addresses bypassing CAPTCHA checks, with sub-techniques for automatically solving them and for avoiding them.
The sub-technique for compromised software dependencies and development tools now also covers IDE and coding agent configuration files. MITRE says the additions help capture “how adversaries get around Multi-Factor Authentication, bot checks, and AI systems.”
In ICS, a new campaign tracks attacks on internet-exposed PLCs at more than 30 water and wastewater utilities in Minnesota, which left operators locked out of their systems. Some reports have said the wider wave resembles Iranian-affiliated activity, but MITRE notes that attribution for the Minnesota intrusions “remains unconfirmed.”
A second campaign documents an AI-assisted breach of Mexican government institutions that spanned IT and OT and reached a municipal water utility.
ICS now also includes the Command and Scripting Interpreter Technique, with sub-techniques for six interpreters, replacing the deprecated Command-Line Interface and Scripting techniques. Two other new sub-techniques cover command and control traffic hidden in DNS and publish/subscribe protocols.
On the threat actor front, MITRE added Nimbus Manticore, an IRGC-associated espionage group targeting aerospace, defense, and telecoms organizations, along with its tools. China-backed Salt Typhoon’s entry now covers its exploitation of network edge devices, while the entry for North Korea’s APT38 reflects a shift from financial theft to software supply chain attacks.
Also new is The Gentlemen, a group running a ransomware-as-a-service operation.
Defenders get 15 new detection strategies, six for Enterprise and nine for ICS, backed by 38 analytics. The new ICS analytics are designed to ignore routine engineering and maintenance work.
For Mobile, MITRE brought back a technique for delivering malicious apps outside official stores, last included in v11. It also added NGate, malware that relays payment card data through a phone’s NFC, which allows attackers to withdraw cash from ATMs.
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