T1584.001: Domains
Adversaries may hijack domains and/or subdomains that can be used during targeting. Domain registration hijacking is the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of the original registrant.[1] Adversaries may gain access to an email account for the person listed as the owner of the domain. The adversary can then claim that they forgot their password in order to make changes to the domain registration. Other possibilities include social engineering a domain registration help desk to gain access to an account, taking advantage of renewal process gaps, or compromising a cloud service that enables managing domains (e.g., AWS Route53).[2]
Subdomain hijacking can occur when organizations have DNS entries that point to non-existent or deprovisioned resources. In such cases, an adversary may take control of a subdomain to conduct operations with the benefit of the trust associated with that domain.[3]
Adversaries who compromise a domain may also engage in domain shadowing by creating malicious subdomains under their control while keeping any existing DNS records. As service will not be disrupted, the malicious subdomains may go unnoticed for long periods of time.[4]
Analyst context for executives and security teams
Domain compromise matters because it lets an adversary operate through infrastructure that already carries trust: a real organization’s domain, subdomain, or DNS-managed service. For leaders, the issue is not only phishing or malware delivery; it is loss of control over a public-facing business identity that customers, partners, employees, and auditors may rely on.
Executive priority
Treat domain and DNS governance as a resilience and brand-trust control, not just an IT configuration task. Priority questions include: who can change registrar, DNS, and cloud-hosted DNS settings; how quickly can the organization detect unauthorized subdomains or dangling DNS records; and whether incident response has a playbook for domain hijacking, subdomain takeover, or domain shadowing. This technique is mapped in ATT&CK to resource development and to multiple campaigns, groups, and software relationships, so it is relevant for threat-informed prioritization even before direct compromise activity is observed locally.
Technical view
This is a PRE-platform resource-development technique under Compromise Infrastructure. SOC, IR, cloud, and infrastructure teams should validate visibility into registrar accounts, DNS zone changes, cloud DNS services such as managed domain hosting, and public DNS state. Because MITRE does not provide official detection text for this object, detection engineering should rely on the related DET0863 detection strategy plus local baselines: expected registrars, authoritative name servers, approved DNS records, valid cloud resource mappings, and authorized subdomain creation patterns.
Likely telemetry
- Registrar account login and administrative change history
- DNS zone file changes, including new, modified, or removed records
- Authoritative name server changes and domain registration metadata changes
- Cloud DNS management logs where domains are administered through cloud services
- Inventory of DNS records pointing to deprovisioned or non-existent resources
Detection direction
- Validate that DET0863-aligned coverage exists for unauthorized domain, subdomain, and DNS changes rather than assuming endpoint or network sensors will see PRE-stage behavior.
- Baseline approved domains, subdomains, registrars, authoritative name servers, DNS record types, and cloud DNS administrators.
- Hunt for dangling DNS records that point to removed cloud or third-party resources, since those can enable subdomain takeover without compromising internal hosts.
- Monitor for newly created subdomains that do not match business naming conventions or ownership records, especially when existing production DNS remains unchanged.
- Tune false positives around legitimate marketing, cloud migration, SaaS onboarding, and disaster recovery DNS changes by requiring change-ticket or asset-owner context.
Mitigation priorities
- Implement pre-compromise controls consistent with M1056: reduce exposed weaknesses before adversaries can use them for resource development.
- Restrict and review who can administer registrar, DNS, and cloud DNS accounts; require strong identity controls for those accounts.
- Maintain an authoritative inventory of domains, subdomains, DNS records, owners, and linked cloud or third-party resources.
- Remove or correct DNS records that point to deprovisioned resources to reduce subdomain takeover risk.
- Establish change control and monitoring for registrar updates, name server changes, DNS zone edits, and unexpected subdomain creation.
Analyst notes and limits
The supplied ATT&CK relationships show this behavior as a sub-technique of T1584 Compromise Infrastructure, mitigated by M1056 Pre-compromise, and detected by DET0863. ATT&CK also maps use of this technique to several campaigns, groups, and Gootloader, which supports threat-informed prioritization but does not by itself indicate current activity in any specific environment.
MITRE provides no official detection text for this technique in the supplied object. Local conclusions require organization-specific evidence: DNS inventory quality, registrar and cloud DNS logging, change-management records, and knowledge of legitimate domain operations. The platform is PRE, so telemetry may sit outside traditional endpoint and internal network monitoring.
Domains
Adversaries may hijack domains and/or subdomains that can be used during targeting. Domain registration hijacking is the act of changing the registration of a domain name without the permission of the original registrant.[1] Adversaries may gain access to an email account for the person listed as the owner of the domain. The adversary can then claim that they forgot their password in order to make changes to the domain registration. Other possibilities include social engineering a domain registration help desk to gain access to an account, taking advantage of renewal process gaps, or compromising a cloud service that enables managing domains (e.g., AWS Route53).[2]
Subdomain hijacking can occur when organizations have DNS entries that point to non-existent or deprovisioned resources. In such cases, an adversary may take control of a subdomain to conduct operations with the benefit of the trust associated with that domain.[3]
Adversaries who compromise a domain may also engage in domain shadowing by creating malicious subdomains under their control while keeping any existing DNS records. As service will not be disrupted, the malicious subdomains may go unnoticed for long periods of time.[4]
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
Related techniques
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1584 | Compromise Infrastructure | This object subtechnique of Compromise Infrastructure. |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0059: Magic Hound
Magic Hound is an Iranian-sponsored threat group that conducts long term, resource-intensive cyber espionage operations, likely on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They have targeted European, U.S., and Middle Eastern government and military personnel, academics, journalists, and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), via complex social engineering campaigns since at least 2014.[1][2][3][4][5]
G1008: SideCopy
SideCopy is a Pakistani threat group that has primarily targeted South Asian countries, including Indian and Afghani government personnel, since at least 2019. SideCopy's name comes from its infection chain that tries to mimic that of Sidewinder, a suspected Indian threat group.[1]
G0134: Transparent Tribe
Transparent Tribe is a suspected Pakistan-based threat group that has been active since at least 2013, primarily targeting diplomatic, defense, and research organizations in India and Afghanistan.[1][2][3]
G1020: Mustard Tempest
Mustard Tempest is an initial access broker that has operated the SocGholish distribution network since at least 2017. Mustard Tempest has partnered with Indrik Spider to provide access for the download of additional malware including LockBit, WastedLocker, and remote access tools.[1][2][3][4]
G0094: Kimsuky
Kimsuky is a Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-based cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2012. The group initially targeted South Korean government agencies, think tanks, and subject-matter experts in various fields. Its operations expanded to include the United Nations and organizations in the government, education, business services, and manufacturing sectors across the United States, Japan, Russia, and Europe. Kimsuky has focused collection on foreign policy and national security issues tied to the Korean Peninsula, nuclear policy, and sanctions. Kimsuky operations have overlapped with those of other North Korean state-sponsored cyber espionage actors as a result of ad hoc collaborations or other limited resource sharing.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Kimsuky was assessed to be responsible for the 2014 Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise; other notable campaigns include Operation STOLEN PENCIL (2018), Operation Kabar Cobra (2019), and Operation Smoke Screen (2019).[7][8][9] In 2023, Kimsuky was observed using commercial large language models (LLMs) to assist with vulnerability research, scripting, social engineering and reconnaissance.[10]
DPRK threat actor cluster boundaries overlap in open source reporting, with some security researchers consolidating all attributed North Korean state-sponsored cyber activity under Lazarus Group, rather than tracking operationally distinct subgroups.
G0006: APT1
S1138: Gootloader
Gootloader is a Javascript-based infection framework that has been used since at least 2020 as a delivery method for the Gootkit banking trojan, Cobalt Strike, REvil, and others. Gootloader operates on an "Initial Access as a Service" model and has leveraged SEO Poisoning to provide access to entities in multiple sectors worldwide including financial, military, automotive, pharmaceutical, and energy.[1][2]
C0024: SolarWinds Compromise
The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.[1] Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[2][3][4][5][1][6][7][8]
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[9][10][11] The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.[12]
C0022: Operation Dream Job
Operation Dream Job was a cyber espionage operation likely conducted by Lazarus Group that targeted the defense, aerospace, government, and other sectors in the United States, Israel, Australia, Russia, and India. In at least one case, the cyber actors tried to monetize their network access to conduct a business email compromise (BEC) operation. In 2020, security researchers noted overlapping TTPs, to include fake job lures and code similarities, between Operation Dream Job, Operation North Star, and Operation Interception; by 2022 security researchers described Operation Dream Job as an umbrella term covering both Operation Interception and Operation North Star.[1][2][3][4]
C0063: 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks
2025 Poland Wiper Attacks is a Russian state-sponsored campaign that conducted destructive cyberattacks against Polish energy infrastructure in December 2025. Targets included more than 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, and a manufacturing sector company. The attacks on the distributed energy resources (DER) disrupted communications between affected facilities and the distribution system operator, but did not impact electricity generation or heat supply. Across the campaign, threat actors deployed two previously undocumented wiper tools, DynoWiper, a Windows-based wiper and LazyWiper, a PowerShell wiper, distributed via malicious Group Policy Objects. At the CHP plant, threat actors had maintained access since at least March 2025, using that foothold to obtain credentials and move laterally before attempting wiper deployment. Some reporting has assessed the activity to be consistent with Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) threat activity group Dragonfly, also tracked as STATIC TUNDRA, while other reporting attributes the destructive wiper activities to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) threat activity group ELECTRUM, also tracked as Sandworm Team.[1][2][3][4]
C0021: C0021
C0021 was a spearphishing campaign conducted in November 2018 that targeted public sector institutions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), educational institutions, and private-sector corporations in the oil and gas, chemical, and hospitality industries. The majority of targets were located in the US, particularly in and around Washington D.C., with other targets located in Europe, Hong Kong, India, and Canada. C0021's technical artifacts, tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs), and targeting overlap with previous suspected APT29 activity.[1][2]
C0010: C0010
C0010 was a cyber espionage campaign conducted by UNC3890 that targeted Israeli shipping, government, aviation, energy, and healthcare organizations. Security researcher assess UNC3890 conducts operations in support of Iranian interests, and noted several limited technical connections to Iran, including PDB strings and Farsi language artifacts. C0010 began by at least late 2020, and was still ongoing as of mid-2022.[1]
All related ATT&CK context
Mitigation direction
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.4 | Current bundle | bdbb1180d314… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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[1]
ICANNDomainNameHijacking
ICANN Security and Stability Advisory Committee. (2005, July 12). Domain Name Hijacking: Incidents, Threats, Risks and Remediation. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
Open source URL -
[2]
Krebs DNS Hijack 2019
Brian Krebs. (2019, February 18). A Deep Dive on the Recent Widespread DNS Hijacking Attacks. Retrieved February 14, 2022.
Open source URL -
[3]
Microsoft Sub Takeover 2020
Microsoft. (2020, September 29). Prevent dangling DNS entries and avoid subdomain takeover. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
Open source URL -
[4]
Palo Alto Unit 42 Domain Shadowing 2022
Janos Szurdi, Rebekah Houser and Daiping Liu. (2022, September 21). Domain Shadowing: A Stealthy Use of DNS Compromise for Cybercrime. Retrieved March 7, 2023.
Open source URL -
[5]
mitre-attack T1584.001Open source URL
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