Upload Malware

Adversaries may upload malware to third-party or adversary controlled infrastructure to make it accessible during targeting. Malicious software can include payloads, droppers, post-compromise tools, backdoors, and a variety of other malicious content. Adversaries may upload malware to support their operations, such as making a payload available to a victim network to enable Ingress Tool Transfer by placing it on an Internet accessible web server. Malware may be placed on infrastructure that was previously purchased/rented by the adversary (Acquire Infrastructure) or was otherwise compromised by them (Compromise Infrastructure). Malware can also be staged on web services, such as GitHub or Pastebin; hosted on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), where decentralized content storage makes the removal of malicious files difficult; or saved on the blockchain as smart contracts, which are resilient against takedowns that would affect traditional infrastructure.¹²³⁴ Adversaries may upload backdoored files, such as software packages, application binaries, virtual machine images, or container images, to third-party software stores, package libraries, extension marketplaces, or repositories (ex: GitHub, CNET, AWS Community AMIs, Docker Hub, PyPi, NPM).⁵ By chance encounter, victims may directly download/install these backdoored files via User Execution. Masquerading, including typosquatting legitimate software, may increase the chance of users mistakenly executing these files.

1. Volexity Ocean Lotus November 2020
2. Talos IPFS 2022
3. Guardio Etherhiding 2023
4. Bleeping Computer Binance Smart Chain 2023
5. Datadog Security Labs Malicious PyPi Packages 2024

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Auto-ingested and not human-reviewed; confidence and validity read by citation.