TeamPCPG1056 ↗
Has used its own Telegram channel and X accounts @pcpcats and @xploitrsturtle2 for external communications.123
tfMITRE ATT&CK sub-technique
Social Media Accounts T1585.001
sub-technique of T1585 Establish Accounts
- Tactic
- Resource Development
- Platform
- PRE
- Version
- 1.1
- Created
- 01 October 2020
- Last modified
- 12 May 2026
Adversaries may create and cultivate social media accounts that can be used during targeting. Adversaries can create social media accounts that can be used to build a persona to further operations. Persona development consists of the development of public information, presence, history and appropriate affiliations.[1][2]
ReconResource DevInitial AccessExecutionPersistencePriv EscStealthDef ImpairmentCred AccessDiscoveryLateral MoveCollectionC2ExfiltrationImpact
19
Threat groupsTop 9%
Threat groups91st percentile · 91% of ATT&CK techniques have this many threat groups attributed or fewer.2
CampaignsTop 17%
Campaigns83rd percentile · 83% of ATT&CK techniques have this many campaigns recorded or fewer.0
Tools & malwareNone recorded
Tools & malwareNone recorded · 29% of ATT&CK techniques have none either.0
Detection rulesNone recorded
Detection rulesNone recorded · 33% of ATT&CK techniques have none either.Social Media Accounts MITRE reference T1585.001
Top 9%of all ATT&CK techniques for number of groups
19 groups have been recorded using this technique. Newest first; each entry carries MITRE’s procedure text and a link to the group’s full record. Click a name to filter the rules below.
VOID MANTICOREG1055 ↗
Has created Telegram Accounts.1 VOID MANTICORE has also leveraged online personas such as Handala Hack, Karma, and Homeland Justice on social media to include Telegram.234 VOID MANTICORE has established and maintained social media accounts on Twitter/X and Telegram to amplify operational claims and stolen data disclosures.5
Contagious InterviewG1052 ↗
Has created fake social media accounts such as LinkedIn and Telegram accounts for their targeting efforts.123456
Medusa GroupG1051 ↗
Has created social media accounts including Telegram and X to publicize their activities.12
Water GaluraG1050 ↗
Operates a news channel on Telegram to make announcements for the Qilin RaaS.1
Moonstone SleetG1036 ↗
Has created social media accounts to interact with victims.1
All 19 groups for this technique · 6 newest in this preview
2 campaigns have been recorded using this technique. Listed newest first; dates are year-granularity and attribution is MITRE’s.
Operation Dream JobC0022 ↗
For Operation Dream Job, Lazarus Group created fake LinkedIn accounts for their targeting efforts.12
Operation GhostC0023 ↗
For Operation Ghost, APT29 registered Twitter accounts to host C2 nodes.1
All 2 campaigns for this technique
Offense vs defense T1585.001
Is defensive coverage keeping up with adversary use? Eight counts, each ranked against all 697 ATT&CK techniques. Attack sits left, defense right, so a shape leaning left means adversaries are better documented here than defenders are equipped. Hover any spoke for its percentile and the share of techniques that have more. The timeline below shows when each side arrived.
Social Media Accounts detection strategy DET0851
MITRE names one behaviour worth catching for this technique and breaks it into 1 analytic, one per platform. Each carries the log sources it needs and the fields you tune per environment.
Detection of Social Media Accounts
1 platform
AN1983 · PRE
Monitor and analyze traffic patterns and packet inspection associated to protocol(s) that do not follow the expected protocol standards and traffic flows (e.g extraneous packets that do not belong to established flows, gratuitous or anomalous traffic patterns, anomalous syntax, or structure). Consider correlation with process monitoring and command line to detect anomalous processes execution and command line arguments associated to traffic patterns (e.g. monitor anomalies in use of files that do not normally initiate connections for respective protocol(s)). Consider monitoring social media activity related to your organization. Suspicious activity may include personas claiming to work for your organization or recently created/modified accounts making numerous connection requests to accounts affiliated with your organization. Detection efforts may be focused on related stages of the adversary lifecycle, such as during Initial Access (ex: Spearphishing via Service).
Log sources
The data this analytic draws on. You do not need every component — each one you already collect covers part of it. Each links to its ATT&CK record.
| Data component | Name | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| Social MediaDC0052 | Persona | None |
| Network Traffic ContentDC0085 | Network Traffic | None |
Pre-compromiseM1056
This technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on behaviors performed outside of the scope of enterprise defenses and controls.