Structured Request Channels for Operational Needs

A subject configures either their web browser or operating system to route HTTP and HTTPS traffic through a manually defined outbound proxy server. This action enables them to redirect web activity through an external node, effectively masking the true destination of network traffic and undermining key layers of enterprise monitoring and control.

By placing a proxy between their endpoint and the internet, the subject can obscure final destinations, bypass domain-based filtering, evade SSL inspection, and suppress logging artifacts that would otherwise be available to investigative teams. This behavior, when unsanctioned, is a hallmark of anti-forensic preparation—often signaling an intent to conceal exfiltration, contact unmonitored services, or test visibility boundaries.

While proxies are sometimes used for legitimate troubleshooting, research, or sandboxing purposes, their use outside approved configurations or infrastructure should be treated as an investigatory lead.

Technical Method

Both browsers and operating systems offer mechanisms to define proxy behavior. These configurations typically involve:

• Declaring a proxy server IP address or hostname (e.g., 198.51.100.7)
• Assigning a port (e.g., 8080, 3128)
• Specifying bypass rules for local or internal traffic (e.g., localhost, *.corp)

Once defined, the behavior is as follows:

• Outbound Traffic Routing: All HTTP and HTTPS traffic is redirected through the proxy server, often using tunneling methods (e.g., HTTP CONNECT).
• DNS Resolution Shift: The proxy, not the local device, resolves domain names—bypassing internal DNS logging and threat intelligence correlation.
• Destination Obfuscation: To enterprise firewalls, CASBs, and Secure Web Gateways, the endpoint appears to connect only to the proxy—not to actual external services.
• Encrypted Traffic Concealment: If the proxy does not participate in the organization’s SSL inspection chain, encrypted traffic remains opaque and unlogged.
• System-Level Impact: When configured at the OS level, the proxy may affect all applications—not just browsers—expanding the anti-forensic footprint to tools such as command-line utilities, development environments, or exfiltration scripts.

Proxy settings may be configured through user interfaces, system preferences, environment variables, or policy files—none of which necessarily require administrative privileges unless endpoint controls are in place.

This technique is especially potent in organizations with reliance on DNS logs, web filtering, or SSL interception as primary visibility mechanisms. It fractures investigative fidelity and should be escalated when observed in unauthorized contexts.

The subject violates organizational policy by allowing or enabling the use of their credentials by another individual or by using credentials that do not align with their identity and/or they are not authorized to use. 

Account sharing undermines accountability, auditability, and access control mechanisms, and is frequently linked to the obfuscation of intent, collusion, or circumvention of oversight. It is often rationalized as a convenience, but may also support broad policy evasion, unauthorized task delegation, or illicit collaboration.

The subject deliberately misuses account constructs to obscure identity, frustrate attribution, or undermine investigative visibility. This includes the use of shared, secondary, abandoned, or illicitly obtained accounts in ways that violate access integrity and complicate forensic analysis.

Unlike traditional infringement behaviors, account misuse in the anti-forensics context is not about the action itself—but about how identity is obfuscated or displaced to conceal that action. These behaviors sever the link between subject and activity, impeding both real-time detection and retrospective investigation.

• Common anti-forensic account misuse techniques include:
• Operating across multiple sanctioned accounts to fragment behavior trails.
• Using shared service accounts to mask individual actions.
• Re-activating or leveraging dormant credentials to perform access without attribution.
• Exploiting misconfigured or ghost accounts left from previous users, contractors, or integrations.

Investigators encountering unexplainable log artifacts, attribution conflicts, or unexpected session collisions should assess whether account misuse is being used as a deliberate concealment tactic. Particular attention should be paid in environments lacking centralized identity governance or with known privilege sprawl.

Account misuse as an anti-forensics strategy often coexists with more overt infringements—enabling data exfiltration, sabotage, or policy evasion while preserving plausible deniability. As such, its detection is crucial to understanding subject intent, tracing activity with confidence, and restoring the chain of custody in incident response.

The subject exploits circumstances for personal gain, convenience, or advantage, often without premeditation or major malicious intent. Opportunistic acts typically arise from perceived gaps in oversight, immediate personal needs, or desires, rather than long-term ideological, financial, or revenge-driven motivations.

Characteristics

• Motivated by immediate self-interest rather than deep-seated grievance or ideology.
• May rationalize actions as minor, justified, or harmless ("no one will notice," "this helps everyone," "it's not a big deal").
• Often triggered by environmental factors such as poor oversight, operational stress, or unmet personal needs.
• May escalate over time if not detected and corrected early.
• Subjects often do not view themselves as "threat actors" and may retain a positive view of their organization.
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Example Scenario

Senior enlisted personnel on a U.S. Navy warship collaborated to procure and install unauthorized satellite internet equipment (Starlink) to improve their onboard quality of life. Acting without command approval, they circumvented Navy IT security protocols, introducing significant operational security (OPSEC) risks. Their motive was personal convenience rather than espionage, sabotage, or financial gain.

The subject transfers sensitive, proprietary, or classified information into an external generative AI platform through text input, file upload, API integration, or embedded application features. This results in uncontrolled data exposure to third-party environments outside organizational governance, potentially violating confidentiality, regulatory, or contractual obligations.

Characteristics

• Involves manual or automated transfer of sensitive data through:
• Web-based AI interfaces (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini).
• Upload of files (e.g., PDFs, DOCX, CSVs) for summarization, parsing, or analysis.
• API calls to generative AI services from scripts or third-party SaaS integrations.
• Embedded AI features inside productivity suites (e.g., Copilot in Microsoft 365, Gemini in Google Workspace).
• Subjects may act with or without malicious intent—motivated by efficiency, convenience, curiosity, or deliberate exfiltration.
• Data transmitted may be stored, cached, logged, or used for model retraining, depending on provider-specific terms of service and API configurations.
• Exfiltration through generative AI channels often evades traditional DLP (Data Loss Prevention) patterns due to novel data formats, variable input methods, and encrypted traffic.

Example Scenario

A subject copies sensitive internal financial projections into a public generative AI chatbot to "optimize" executive presentation materials. The AI provider, per its terms of use, retains inputs for service improvement and model fine-tuning. Sensitive data—now stored outside corporate control—becomes vulnerable to exposure through potential data breaches, subpoena, insider misuse at the service provider, or future unintended model outputs.

The subject leverages Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to contain forensic artifacts within a Linux-like runtime environment embedded in Windows. By operating inside WSL, the subject avoids writing sensitive data, tool activity, or command history to traditional Windows locations, significantly reducing visibility to host-based forensic and security tools.

WSL creates a logical Linux environment that appears separate from the Windows file system. Although some host-guest integration exists, activity within WSL often bypasses standard Windows event logging, registry updates, and process tracking. This allows the subject to execute scripts, use Unix-native tools, stage exfiltration, or decrypt payloads with minimal footprint on the host.

Example Scenarios:

• The subject downloads and processes sensitive files inside the WSL environment using native Linux tools (e.g., scp, gpg, rsync), preventing access and modification timestamps from appearing in Windows Explorer or standard audit logs.
• A subject extracts and stages exfiltration material in /mnt/c within WSL, using symbolic links and Linux file permissions to obscure its presence from Windows search and indexing services.
• WSL is used to execute recon and credential-harvesting scripts (e.g., nmap, hydra, ssh enumeration tools), with no execution trace in Windows Event Logs.
• Upon completion of activity, the subject deletes the WSL distribution, leaving minimal residue on the host system—especially if no antivirus or EDR coverage extends into the WSL layer.

A subject deliberately shares credentials for non-personal, persistent service accounts (e.g., admin, automation, deployment) with other individuals, either within or outside their team. These accounts often lack individual attribution, and when shared, they create a pool of untracked, unaccountable access.

Service account sharing typically emerges in high-pressure operational environments where speed or convenience is prioritized over access hygiene. Teams may rationalize the behavior as necessary to meet deployment deadlines, maintain uptime, or circumvent perceived access bottlenecks. In other cases, access may be extended informally to external collaborators, such as contractors or partner engineers, without proper onboarding or oversight.

When service account credentials are distributed, they become functionally equivalent to a shared key—undermining all identity-based controls. Investigators lose the ability to reliably associate actions with individuals, making forensic attribution difficult or impossible. This gap often delays incident response and enables repeated policy violations without detection.

Service accounts also frequently carry elevated privileges, operate without MFA, and are excluded from normal UAM logging, compounding the risk. Their use in this manner represents not just a technical misstep, but a structural breakdown in control integrity and accountability. In environments with compliance obligations or segmented access controls, service account sharing is a critical investigative red flag and should trigger formal review.

The subject leverages multiple accounts under their control—each legitimate on its own—to distribute, disguise, or segment activity in a manner that defeats identity-based attribution. This technique, referred to as account obfuscation, is designed to frustrate forensic correlation between subject behavior and account usage.

Unlike role-sanctioned multi-account use (e.g., one account for user access, another for administrative tasks), account obfuscation involves the deliberate operational separation of actions across identities to conceal intent, evade controls, or introduce ambiguity. This may involve:

• Using a privileged account to perform high-risk or policy-violating actions while maintaining a clean audit trail on the primary user account.
• Staging data using an internal identity and exfiltrating it using an external or contractor credential.
• Alternating between corporate and guest accounts to avoid continuous session logging or alerting thresholds.

This behavior is often facilitated by weak identity governance, fragmented access models, or unmanaged role transitions. It is especially difficult to detect in environments where access provisioning is ad hoc, audit scopes are limited, or account correlation is not enforced at the SIEM or UAM level.

From an investigative standpoint, account obfuscation serves as a deliberate anti-forensics tactic—enabling subjects to operate with plausible deniability and complicating timeline reconstruction. Investigators should review cross-account behavior patterns, concurrent session overlaps, and role-permission inconsistencies when this technique is suspected.