216.73.217.172

T1573.002: T1573.002

View on MITRE ATT&CK The MITRE Corporation · Published 16/03/2020 16:48 · Modified 27/03/2026 01:11

Essential information

MITRE technique ID
T1573.002
Confidence
100/100
Revoked
No
Published
16/03/2020 16:48
Modified
27/03/2026 01:11
Author / Source
The MITRE Corporation

Aliases

Asymmetric Cryptography

Platforms

windows macos linux Network Devices ESXi

Description

Adversaries may employ a known asymmetric encryption algorithm to conceal command and control traffic rather than relying on any inherent protections provided by a communication protocol. Asymmetric cryptography, also known as public key cryptography, uses a keypair per party: one public that can be freely distributed, and one private. Due to how the keys are generated, the sender encrypts data with the receiver’s public key and the receiver decrypts the data with their private key. This ensures that only the intended recipient can read the encrypted data. Common public key encryption algorithms include RSA and ElGamal. For efficiency, many protocols (including SSL/TLS) use symmetric cryptography once a connection is established, but use asymmetric cryptography to establish or transmit a key. As such, these protocols are classified as [Asymmetric Cryptography](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1573/002).

Kill chain phases

Kill chainPhase
mitre-attack command-and-control

Marking (TLP)

TLP:CLEAR Copyright 2015-2025, The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation.

External references

Related entities

Intrusion sets, malware, reports, vulnerabilities, indicators and other entities linked to this technique.