ExtraHop named a Leader in the 2025 Forrester Wave™: Network Analysis And Visibility Solutions

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DETECTION OVERVIEW

Empire C&C HTTP Connection

Risk Factors

Empire is a publicly available and well-known tool associated with pen testing, security assessments, and persistent, planned attacks. Through a persistent C&C channel, an attacker can remotely control a device and gain an entry point for further attacks on the network.

Category

Command-and-Control
Detection diagram
Next in Command-and-Control: External Dharma Ransomware File Transfer

Attack Background

Empire is a post-exploitation framework that is often associated with malicious activity. The Empire framework enables an attacker to disguise C&C communications from an Empire agent, which is installed on the victim device, as legitimate traffic. For example, the victim sends an HTTP GET request to the attacker with encrypted data. The C&C server responds with a task such as "sleep" or "run command". Based on the module specifications, the command output is then encrypted within another request, such as an HTTP POST request.

Mitigation Options

Quarantine the device while checking for the presence of malware

Monitor and investigate unusual network activity for lateral movement or data exfiltration

MITRE ATT&CK ID

Associated content

Announcing The Forrester Wave™: Network Analysis And Visibility Solutions, Q4 2025

Network analysis and visibility solutions remain underrepresented in enterprises. Find out why in this preview of a new Wave report.

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ExtraHop® Named a Leader in First-Ever Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response — ExtraHop

ExtraHop® Named a Leader in First-Ever Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Network Detection and Response

News

Detections

Visit this resource for more information.

Docs

The 2025 ExtraHop Global Threat Landscape Report: The Alarming Reality of Threat Actor Dwell Time and Deeper Network Access — ExtraHop

This analysis exposes the critical link between an organization's lack of internal visibility and the escalating cost of compromise, demanding an urgent re-evaluation of how core business assets are protected.

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ExtraHop RevealX MITRE ATT&CK Coverage 2024 — ExtraHop

Learn why you need to be wary of the claims certain network detection and response providers make about their coverage against the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

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MITRE ATT&CK - Network Detection & Response with RevealX — ExtraHop

Learn how NDR from RevealX helps security teams detect and investigate more adversary TTPs in the MITRE ATT&CK framework than rule-based tools.

External
Periodic Table of Use Cases

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