T1657: Financial Theft
Adversaries may steal monetary resources from targets through extortion, social engineering, technical theft, or other methods aimed at their own financial gain at the expense of the availability of these resources for victims. Financial theft is the ultimate objective of several popular campaign types including extortion by ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) and fraud, "pig butchering," bank hacking, and exploiting cryptocurrency networks.
Adversaries may Compromise Accounts to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds. In the case of business email compromise or email fraud, an adversary may utilize Impersonation of a trusted entity. Once the social engineering is successful, victims can be deceived into sending money to financial accounts controlled by an adversary. This creates the potential for multiple victims (i.e., compromised accounts as well as the ultimate monetary loss) in incidents involving financial theft.
Extortion by ransomware may occur, for example, when an adversary demands payment from a victim after Data Encrypted for Impact and Exfiltration of data, followed by threatening to leak sensitive data to the public unless payment is made to the adversary. Adversaries may use dedicated leak sites to distribute victim data.
Due to the potentially immense business impact of financial theft, an adversary may abuse the possibility of financial theft and seeking monetary gain to divert attention from their true goals such as Data Destruction and business disruption.
How it's found
Detection Strategy for Financial Theft: Monitor for anomalous access to financial applications, browser-based banking sessions, or enterprise ERP systems from Windows endpoints. Detect mass emailing of payment instructions, sudden rule changes in Outlook for financial staff, or use of clipboard data exfiltration tied to cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Monitor server and endpoint logs for unusual outbound network connections to cryptocurrency nodes, unauthorized scripts accessing financial systems, or automation targeting payment file formats. Detect curl/wget activity aimed at exfiltrating transaction data or credentials from financial apps. Monitor unified logs for access to payment applications, browser plug-ins, or Apple Pay services from non-standard processes. Detect anomalous use of Automator scripts or keychain extraction targeting financial account credentials. Monitor SaaS financial systems (e.g., QuickBooks, Workday, SAP S/4HANA cloud) for unauthorized access, rule changes, or mass export of financial data. Detect anomalous transfers initiated via SaaS APIs or new MFA-disabled logins targeting finance apps. Monitor email and document management systems for fraudulent invoices, impersonation of vendors, or BEC-style payment redirections. Detect abnormal editing of invoice templates, or emails containing known fraud language combined with attachment delivery.
Standards mapping
Where this fits in a TurboPentest engagement
This weakness is not covered by the automated black-box pentest. IntegSec pentesters cover it in a manual engagement.
Frequently asked questions
What is T1657 Financial Theft?
Adversaries may steal monetary resources from targets through extortion, social engineering, technical theft, or other methods aimed at their own financial gain at the expense of the availability of these resources for victims. Financial theft is the ultimate objective of several popular campaign types including extortion by ransomware, business email compromise (BEC) and fraud, "pig butchering," bank hacking, and exploiting cryptocurrency networks. Adversaries may Compromise Accounts to conduct unauthorized transfers of funds. In the case of business email compromise or email fraud, an adversary may utilize Impersonation of a trusted entity. Once the social engineering is successful, victims can be deceived into sending money to financial accounts controlled by an adversary. This creates the potential for multiple victims (i.e., compromised accounts as well as the ultimate monetary loss) in incidents involving financial theft. Extortion by ransomware may occur, for example, when an adversary demands payment from a victim after Data Encrypted for Impact and Exfiltration of data, followed by threatening to leak sensitive data to the public unless payment is made to the adversary. Adversaries may use dedicated leak sites to distribute victim data. Due to the potentially immense business impact of financial theft, an adversary may abuse the possibility of financial theft and seeking monetary gain to divert attention from their true goals such as Data Destruction and business disruption.
Which tactics does T1657 belong to?
T1657 maps to the Impact tactic.
Does TurboPentest test for Financial Theft?
This weakness is not covered by the automated black-box pentest. IntegSec pentesters cover it in a manual engagement.
Related MITRE ATT&CK techniques
About this reference
These security references are maintained by IntegSec, an offensive-security firm whose team holds CISSP, OSCP, and OSCE certifications and has run thousands of penetration tests. Content is kept current as tools, standards, and attack techniques evolve.
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