Adversaries may use steganographic techniques to hide command and control traffic to make detection efforts more difficult. Steganographic techniques can be used to hide data in digital messages that are transferred between systems. This hidden information can be used for command and control of compromised systems. In some cases, the passing of files embedded using steganography, such as image or document files, can be used for command and control.
Unusual use of steganographic or media processing binaries (e.g., `steghide`, `ffmpeg`, `imagemagick`) followed by outbound communication to external IPs with high data output and media MIME types.
Suspicious modification of file artifacts (e.g., logs, ISO templates) on ESXi datastores, followed by beaconing or POST operations to external IPs potentially hiding payloads in file-like traffic.
Detect the creation or modification of common media file formats (e.g., .jpg, .png, .wav) following suspicious process activity like compression or encryption, especially when paired with lateral movement or exfiltration behavior.