Groove

MITRE ATT&CK does not currently catalogue Groove, so this is our assessment of the techniques it uses, drawn from public reporting. The techniques themselves, and every "what that means" definition below, come from MITRE ATT&CK v19.2. Confidence: medium. Treat it as orientation, not attribution.

1. T1078.003 Local Accounts Initial AccessPersistencePrivilege EscalationStealth

   What they do: groove exploits valid local accounts harvested during discovery to maintain persistence and evade access controls.

   What that means: Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of a local account as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion.

2. T1059.001 PowerShell Execution

   What they do: groove executes malicious commands via PowerShell scripts to stage ransomware payloads and manipulate system behavior.

   What that means: Adversaries may abuse PowerShell commands and scripts for execution.

3. T1106 Native API Execution

   What they do: groove leverages native API calls to interact with Windows services and evade detection during initial execution.

   What that means: Adversaries may interact with the native OS application programming interface (API) to execute behaviors.

4. T1547.001 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder PersistencePrivilege Escalation

   What they do: groove adds malicious registry run keys to ensure ransomware execution upon system reboot for persistence.

   What that means: Adversaries may achieve persistence by adding a program to a startup folder or referencing it with a Registry run key.

5. T1685 Disable or Modify Tools Defense Impairment

   What they do: groove disables antivirus tools and security software by terminating processes and modifying system configurations.

   What that means: Adversaries may disable, degrade, or tamper with security tools or applications (e.g., endpoint detection and response (EDR) tools, intrusion detection systems (IDS), antivirus, logging agents, sensors, etc.) to impair or reduce visibility of defensive capabilities.

6. T1070.004 File Deletion Stealth

   What they do: groove deletes Volume Shadow Copies and backup directories using vssadmin to prevent data restoration.

   What that means: Adversaries may delete files left behind by the actions of their intrusion activity.

7. T1110 Brute Force Credential Access

   What they do: groove brute-forces local usernames and passwords to gain initial access to networked systems.

   What that means: Adversaries may use brute force techniques to gain access to accounts when passwords are unknown or when password hashes are obtained.

8. T1057 Process Discovery Discovery

   What they do: groove discovers running processes using process enumeration tools to identify critical services for disruption.

   What that means: Adversaries may attempt to get information about running processes on a system.

9. T1021.002 SMB/Windows Admin Shares Lateral Movement

   What they do: groove moves laterally across the network by exploiting SMB shares to access additional victim machines.

   What that means: Adversaries may use Valid Accounts to interact with a remote network share using Server Message Block (SMB).

10. T1041 Exfiltration Over C2 Channel Exfiltration

    What they do: groove exfiltrates stolen victim data over encrypted C2 channels before deploying the ransomware payload.

    What that means: Adversaries may steal data by exfiltrating it over an existing command and control channel.

11. T1486 Data Encrypted for Impact Impact

    What they do: groove encrypts victim files using strong symmetric cryptography to maximize impact and ransom demand leverage.

    What that means: Adversaries may encrypt data on target systems or on large numbers of systems in a network to interrupt availability to system and network resources.

12. T1490 Inhibit System Recovery Impact

    What they do: groove executes commands to inhibit system recovery attempts by disabling backup restoration mechanisms.

    What that means: Adversaries may delete or remove built-in data and turn off services designed to aid in the recovery of a corrupted system to prevent recovery.