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MITRE ATT&CK sub-technique

T1614.001 — System Language Discovery

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T1614.001 (System Language Discovery) is a MITRE ATT&CK sub-technique tracked in WhisperGraph, serving the Discovery tactic.

Description

Adversaries may attempt to gather information about the system language of a victim in order to infer the geographical location of that host. This information may be used to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether the adversary infects the target and/or attempts specific actions. This decision may be employed by malware developers and operators to reduce their risk of attracting the attention of specific law enforcement agencies or prosecution/scrutiny from other entities.(Citation: Malware System Language Check) There are various sources of data an adversary could use to infer system language, such as system defaults and keyboard layouts. Specific checks will vary based on the target and/or adversary, but may involve behaviors such as [Query Registry](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1012) and calls to [Native API](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1106) functions.(Citation: CrowdStrike Ryuk January 2019) For example, on a Windows system adversaries may attempt to infer the language of a system by querying the registry key <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Language</code> or parsing the outputs of Windows API functions <code>GetUserDefaultUILanguage</code>, <code>GetSystemDefaultUILanguage</code>, <code>GetKeyboardLayoutList</code> and <code>GetUserDefaultLangID</code>.(Citation: Darkside Ransomware Cybereason)(Citation: Securelist JSWorm)(Citation: SecureList SynAck Doppelgänging May 2018) On a macOS or Linux system, adversaries may query <code>locale</code> to retrieve the value of the <code>$LANG</code> environment variable.

Tactics

Related techniques

Parent technique: T1614 · System Location Discovery

Threat actors observed using this technique

© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.

Related pages

Pivot from T1614.001 into its tactic, related techniques and the actors that use it.

Queries

Resolves the segment to this technique or tactic.


MATCH (t:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $id})
RETURN t.id AS id, t.name AS name, t.kind AS kind, t.description AS description
Run yourself →

The tactic(s) this technique serves.


MATCH (t:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $id})-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN tac.id AS id, tac.name AS name
LIMIT 10
Run yourself →

This id's parent technique, if it is a sub-technique.


MATCH (p:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $parentId})
RETURN p.id AS id, p.name AS name
LIMIT 1
Run yourself →

Sub-techniques of this technique, if any.


MATCH (c:ATTACK_PATTERN) WHERE c.id STARTS WITH $subPrefix
RETURN c.id AS id, c.name AS name
ORDER BY c.id
LIMIT 25
Run yourself →

Threat actors observed using this technique.


MATCH (a:ACTOR)-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN {name: $id})
RETURN a.name AS name
LIMIT 100
Run yourself →

Or query Whisper from your own LLM workflow via the Whisper MCP server.