T1614 System Location Discovery

T1614 System Location Discovery

High-Level Description

Adversaries may gather information in an attempt to calculate the geographical location of a victim host. Adversaries may use the information from System Location Discovery during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether or not the adversary fully infects the target and/or attempts specific actions.

Adversaries may attempt to infer the location of a system using various system checks, such as time zone, keyboard layout, and/or language settings. Windows API functions such as GetLocaleInfoW can also be used to determine the locale of the host. In cloud environments, an instance's availability zone may also be discovered by accessing the instance metadata service from the instance.

Adversaries may also attempt to infer the location of a victim host using IP addressing, such as via online geolocation IP-lookup services.

Kill Chain Phase

• Discovery (TA0007)

Platforms: IaaS, Linux, macOS, Windows

What to Check

• Identify if System Location Discovery technique is applicable to target environment
• Check IaaS systems for indicators of System Location Discovery
• Check Linux systems for indicators of System Location Discovery
• Check macOS systems for indicators of System Location Discovery
• Assess detection coverage (1 detection strategies)

How to Test

Atomic Red Team Tests

The following tests are from Atomic Red Team and provide actionable ways to test this technique:

Atomic Test 1: Get geolocation info through IP-Lookup services using curl Windows

Get geolocation info through IP-Lookup services using curl Windows. The default URL of the IP-Lookup service is https://ipinfo.io/. References: https://securelist.com/transparent-tribe-part-1/98127/ and https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2016/05/03/location-based-ransomware-threat-research/

Supported Platforms: windows

#{curl_path} -k #{ip_lookup_url}