Official Description

Adversaries may encode data to make the content of command and control traffic more difficult to detect. Command and control (C2) information can be encoded using a standard data encoding system. Use of data encoding may adhere to existing protocol specifications and includes use of ASCII, Unicode, Base64, MIME, or other binary-to-text and character encoding systems.(Citation: Wikipedia Binary-to-text Encoding) (Citation: Wikipedia Character Encoding) Some data encoding systems may also result in data compression, such as gzip.
Tactics
Command And Control
Platforms
ESXi, Linux, macOS, Windows
MITRE Version
1.3
Last Modified
May 12, 2026

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Sub-techniques (2)