Runtime Data Manipulation

What the technique is

Adversaries may modify systems in order to manipulate the data as it is accessed and displayed to an end user, thus threatening the integrity of the data. By manipulating runtime data, adversaries may attempt to affect a business process, organizational understanding, and decision making. Adversaries may alter application binaries used to display data in order to cause runtime manipulations. Adversaries may also conduct Change Default File Association and Masquerading to cause a similar effect. The type of modification and the impact it will have depends on the target application and process as well as the goals and objectives of the adversary. For complex systems, an adversary would likely need special expertise and possibly access to specialized software related to the system that would typically be gained through a prolonged information gathering campaign in order to have the desired impact.

What MITRE says you would watch

• AN1097

  Monitor for runtime data manipulations by detecting suspicious modification of application binaries, API hooking, or unexpected behavior from processes responsible for rendering or displaying data. Correlate registry edits, process creation, and unexpected binary hash mismatches.

• AN1098

  Detect runtime manipulation by monitoring system calls for modifications to shared libraries, ELF binaries, or environment variables that affect how data is displayed. Look for suspicious writes to application directories and mismatch in binary integrity baselines.

• AN1099

  Monitor for runtime manipulation by observing changes in application bundles, unexpected signing modifications, and runtime API calls that inject or alter how data is displayed. Detect alterations in CFNetwork or CoreFoundation frameworks responsible for rendering data.