System Location Discovery

When a detection for this fires

What the technique is

Adversaries may gather information in an attempt to calculate the geographical location of a victim host. Adversaries may use the information from System Location Discovery during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether or not the adversary fully infects the target and/or attempts specific actions. Adversaries may attempt to infer the location of a system using various system checks, such as time zone, keyboard layout, and/or language settings. Windows API functions such as GetLocaleInfoW can also be used to determine the locale of the host. In cloud environments, an instance's availability zone may also be discovered by accessing the instance metadata service from the instance. Adversaries may also attempt to infer the location of a victim host using IP addressing, such as via online geolocation IP-lookup services.

What MITRE says you would watch

• AN0119

  Unusual process or API usage attempting to query system locale, timezone, or keyboard layout (e.g., calls to GetLocaleInfoW, GetTimeZoneInformation). Detection can be enhanced by correlating with processes not typically associated with system configuration queries, such as unknown binaries or scripts.

• AN0120

  Detection of commands accessing locale, timezone, or language settings such as 'locale', 'timedatectl', or parsing /etc/timezone. Anomalous execution by unusual users or automation scripts should be flagged.

• AN0121

  Detection of system calls or commands accessing system locale (e.g., 'defaults read -g AppleLocale', 'systemsetup -gettimezone'). Correlate with unusual parent processes or execution contexts.