Exfiltration Over Physical Medium: Exfiltration over USB T1052.001

Tactic: Exfiltration

Adversaries may attempt to exfiltrate data over a USB connected physical device. In certain circumstances, such as an air-gapped network compromise, exfiltration could occur via a USB device introduced by a user. The USB device could be used as the final exfiltration point or to hop between otherwise disconnected systems.

Events covered

3 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 4 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.

Fields filtered most (8 distinct)

The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.

FieldRulesHowSample values
EventType1eq 1mount
TargetObject1contains 1usbstor
event.category1eq 1registry
event.outcome1eq 1success
event.type1eq 1device
host.os.type1in 1
registry_value_name1eq 1FriendlyName
volume.removable1eq 1true

Top indicator values (7 distinct)

Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
EventTypeeq
mount
1
TargetObjectcontains
usbstor
1
event.categoryeq
registry
14
event.outcomeeq
success
1251
event.typeeq
device
1
registry_value_nameeq
FriendlyName
13
volume.removableeq
true
1

Rules under this technique

Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.

Platform (all)
Domain (all)

Elastic 4 rules