Command and Control (C2) :
Imagine you’re a hacker, sitting in a quiet room with a cup of coffee, monitoring a network of infected devices that you've quietly breached. These infected devices are under your control.
you can command them to do whatever you want – whether it’s stealing information, spreading malware
You’ve set up a Command and Control (C2) system, which is like your secret communication line to these devices. This system allows you to send instructions to the infected machines and get their information back.
Without this C2 system, the devices would just be sitting there, waiting for orders that they would never receive.
But with C2, you hold the strings.
At first, you had to get into the network. Maybe you sent a phishing email or tricked someone into clicking a dangerous link. Once you gained access, your malware silently set up a C2 channel – a way for you to communicate remotely, even though you’re sitting far away.
This communication can be through various methods, like sending encrypted messages over a regular website connection (HTTP), over DNS requests to send commands in a way that no one would notice, or even communicating through a peer-to-peer system where the infected machines talk directly to each other.
Now, you’re in control. You’ve issued the first set of commands: “Send all the company’s customer data to me.” The infected machines quietly execute your orders and send the data back to your secure server, where you can download it without ever stepping foot into the building. No alarms go off, and no one is the wiser.
But you're not done. The longer you can keep this communication line open, the longer you can control these systems and steal valuable information. You might also send commands to spread your malware to more devices, infecting the network further and growing your army of compromised machines. Each new machine is another soldier in your ever-expanding digital army, obedient to your every command.
However, this doesn’t last forever. Eventually, the people who maintain the network will start noticing strange activities – maybe some odd outbound traffic or weird DNS requests that don't look normal. If they catch on, they could start blocking your C2 server, which could cut off your access. But you've planned for this. You’ve set up multiple C2 channels across different networks and protocols, so even if one is discovered and blocked, others are still open for business. Your control over the infected network remains intact.
