C0027C0027 ↗
During C0027, Scattered Spider sent Telegram messages impersonating IT personnel to harvest credentials.1
tfMITRE ATT&CK sub-technique
Spearphishing Service T1598.001
sub-technique of T1598 Phishing for Information
- Tactic
- Reconnaissance
- Platform
- PRE
- Version
- 1.0
- Created
- 02 October 2020
- Last modified
- 24 October 2025
- Contributor
- Robert Simmons, @MalwareUtkonos
Adversaries may send spearphishing messages via third-party services to elicit sensitive information that can be used during targeting. Spearphishing for information is an attempt to trick targets into divulging information, frequently credentials or other actionable information. Spearphishing for information frequently involves social engineering techniques, such as posing as a source with a reason to collect information (ex: Establish Accounts or Compromise Accounts) and/or sending multiple, seemingly urgent messages.
ReconResource DevInitial AccessExecutionPersistencePriv EscStealthDef ImpairmentCred AccessDiscoveryLateral MoveCollectionC2ExfiltrationImpact
0
Threat groupsNone recorded
Threat groupsNone recorded · 29% of ATT&CK techniques have none either.1
Campaigns72nd pct
Campaigns72nd percentile · 72% 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.Spearphishing Service MITRE reference T1598.001
72nd pctamong all ATT&CK techniques for number of campaigns
1 campaign has been recorded using this technique. Listed newest first; dates are year-granularity and attribution is MITRE’s.
All 1 campaigns for this technique
Offense vs defense T1598.001
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.
Spearphishing Service detection strategy DET0821
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 Spearphishing Service
1 platform
AN1953 · PRE
Monitor social media traffic for suspicious activity, including messages requesting information as well as abnormal file or data transfers (especially those involving unknown, or otherwise suspicious accounts). Much of this activity may have a very high occurrence and associated false positive rate, as well as potentially taking place outside the visibility of the target organization, making detection difficult for defenders. Detection efforts may be focused on related stages of the adversary lifecycle, such as during Initial Access. Monitor network data for uncommon data flows. Processes utilizing the network that do not normally have network communication or have never been seen before are suspicious. 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)).
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Application Log ContentDC0038 | Application Log | None |
| Network Traffic FlowDC0078 | Network Traffic | None |
| Network Traffic ContentDC0085 | Network Traffic | None |
User TrainingM1017
Users can be trained to identify social engineering techniques and spearphishing attempts.