Adversaries may gather information about the victim's identity that can be used during targeting. Information about identities may include a variety of details, including personal data (ex: employee names, email addresses, security question responses, etc.) as well as sensitive details such as credentials or multi-factor authentication (MFA) configurations.
Adversaries may gather this information in various ways, such as direct elicitation via Phishing for Information. Information about users could also be enumerated via other active means (i.e. Active Scanning) such as probing and analyzing responses from authentication services that may reveal valid usernames in a system or permitted MFA /methods associated with those usernames.[1][2] Information about victims may also be exposed to adversaries via online or other accessible data sets (ex: Social Media or Search Victim-Owned Websites).[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]
Gathering this information may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: Search Open Websites/Domains or Phishing for Information), establishing operational resources (ex: Compromise Accounts), and/or initial access (ex: Phishing or Valid Accounts).
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| G0050 | APT32 |
APT32 has conducted targeted surveillance against activists and bloggers.[11] |
| G1052 | Contagious Interview |
Contagious Interview has researched specific professional groups such as software developers for targeting.[12][13][14][15][16][17] Contagious Interview has also researched individuals who work in roles related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.[18][19] |
| G1016 | FIN13 |
FIN13 has researched employees to target for social engineering attacks.[20] |
| G1001 | HEXANE |
HEXANE has identified specific potential victims at targeted organizations.[21] |
| G1004 | LAPSUS$ |
LAPSUS$ has gathered detailed information of target employees to enhance their social engineering lures.[22] |
| G0059 | Magic Hound |
Magic Hound has acquired mobile phone numbers of potential targets, possibly for mobile malware or additional phishing operations.[23] |
| C0022 | Operation Dream Job |
For Operation Dream Job, Lazarus Group conducted extensive reconnaissance research on potential targets.[24] |
| C0014 | Operation Wocao |
During Operation Wocao, threat actors targeted people based on their organizational roles and privileges.[25] |
| G1015 | Scattered Spider |
Scattered Spider has used information from previous data breaches to identify employee names to be used in social engineering.[26] |
| G1033 | Star Blizzard |
Star Blizzard has identified ways to engage targets by researching potential victims' interests and social or professional contacts.[27] |
| G1017 | Volt Typhoon |
Volt Typhoon has gathered victim identify information during pre-compromise reconnaissance. [28] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1056 | Pre-compromise |
This technique cannot be easily mitigated with preventive controls since it is based on behaviors performed outside of the scope of enterprise defenses and controls. Efforts should focus on minimizing the amount and sensitivity of data available to external parties. |
| ID | Name | Analytic ID | Analytic Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| DET0841 | Detection of Gather Victim Identity Information | AN1973 |
Monitor for suspicious network traffic that could be indicative of probing for user information, such as large/iterative quantities of authentication requests originating from a single source (especially if the source is known to be associated with an adversary/botnet). Analyzing web metadata may also reveal artifacts that can be attributed to potentially malicious activity, such as referer or user-agent string HTTP/S fields. |