Masquerading

Description

Adversaries may attempt to manipulate features of their artifacts to make them appear legitimate or benign to users and/or security tools. Masquerading occurs when the name or location of an object, legitimate or malicious, is manipulated or abused for the sake of evading defenses and observation. This may include manipulating file metadata, tricking users into misidentifying the file type, and giving legitimate task or service names.

In public artifact registries such as HuggingFace, adversaries may reclaim or recreate a previously trusted namespace or path after it is deleted or renamed. Systems that resolve stale, unpinned identifiers may then retrieve adversary-controlled artifacts that appear to be the originally trusted artifact.

ATLAS ID: AML.T0074
Maturity: RealizedUsed by real adversaries against AI systems in the wild.
Platforms: Enterprise

Mitigations

AML.M0011Restrict Library Loading
Restrict library loading to trusted locations and approved libraries so disguised malicious libraries cannot be loaded as legitimate dependencies.
AML.M0025Maintain AI Dataset Provenance
Record dataset sources and modification history so datasets falsely presented as trusted can be identified.

Case studies that use it

Related ATT&CK technique

ATLAS adapts this technique from MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise.

T1036Masquerading

Across MITRE's defensive frameworks

Linked through the 1 ATT&CK technique above.

Counter with D3FEND

Defensive techniques MITRE D3FEND maps to the same ATT&CK techniques.

7 more in the full list

Detect with CAR

MITRE CAR analytics that cover the same ATT&CK techniques.

Defense Evasion AML.T0074