Cobalt Strike can leverage the HTTP protocol for C2 communication, while hiding the actual data in either an HTTP header, URI parameter, the transaction body, or appending it to the URI.3 Cobalt Strike has also added Host: ocsp.verisign.com to HTTP headers to mimic Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) traffic.4
tool
Cobalt Strike S0154
- Type
- malware
- Platforms
- Linux, macOS, Windows
- Created
- 14 December 2017
- Last modified
- 23 April 2026
Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.[1]
In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz.[2]
73
TechniquesTop 1%
12
TacticsTop 1%
30
Threat groupsunranked
6
Campaignsunranked
Enterprise ATT&CK only. Any Mobile or ICS rows on the same ATT&CK page are not carried.
MITRE reference S0154
Cobalt Strike can spawn a job to inject into LSASS memory and dump password hashes.5
Cobalt Strike can recover hashed passwords.6
Cobalt Strike can collect data from a local system.78
Cobalt Strike can enumerate services on compromised hosts.9
Cobalt Strike can query <code>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\<Excel Version>\Excel\Security\AccessVBOM\</code> to determine if the security setting for restricting default programmatic access is enabled.1011
Standing S0154
Reach is how much of ATT&CK this tool touches. Coverage is how well defended each thing it does is, as a median per technique rather than a total — a total would just restate the reach. Each figure is ranked against all 825 ATT&CK software entries only where that population actually spreads. Where most of the population shares one value, a percentile would rank the tie instead of the entity, so the raw value is shown and no rank is claimed.
Reach
Techniques73Top 1%
100th percentile · None of the 825 ATT&CK software entries has more Enterprise techniques — the highest in the population.
Tactics12Top 1%
100th percentile · None of the 825 ATT&CK software entries has more tactics spanned — the highest in the population.
Threat groups3061% tie · 22 values
61% of the population shares a single value across only 22 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Campaigns685% tie · 8 values
85% of the population shares a single value across only 8 distinct values, so a percentile here would rank the tie, not the entity.
Coverage
Rules / technique20med48th pct
48th percentile · 52% of 825 ATT&CK software entries have more detection rules per technique.
Tests / technique5
Detection coverage S0154
2211 distinct rules cover the 73 techniques recorded for this tool. The 2684 technique-to-rule mappings resolve to 2211 distinct rules, because one rule can cover several techniques. 1420 Sigma · 791 Splunk.
68 covered by at least one rule5 with no coverage2211 distinct rules in total
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