| ID | Name |
|---|---|
| T1589.001 | Credentials |
| T1589.002 | Email Addresses |
| T1589.003 | Employee Names |
Adversaries may gather email addresses that can be used during targeting. Even if internal instances exist, organizations may have public-facing email infrastructure and addresses for employees.
Adversaries may easily gather email addresses, since they may be readily available and exposed via online or other accessible data sets (ex: Social Media or Search Victim-Owned Websites).[1][2] Email addresses could also be enumerated via more active means (i.e. Active Scanning), such as probing and analyzing responses from authentication services that may reveal valid usernames in a system.[3] For example, adversaries may be able to enumerate email addresses in Office 365 environments by querying a variety of publicly available API endpoints, such as autodiscover and GetCredentialType.[4][5]
Gathering this information may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: Search Open Websites/Domains or Phishing for Information), establishing operational resources (ex: Email Accounts), and/or initial access (ex: Phishing or Brute Force via External Remote Services).
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| S0677 | AADInternals |
AADInternals can check for the existence of user email addresses using public Microsoft APIs.[6][7] |
| G0050 | APT32 |
APT32 has collected e-mail addresses for activists and bloggers in order to target them with spyware.[8] |
| G1011 | EXOTIC LILY |
EXOTIC LILY has gathered targeted individuals' e-mail addresses through open source research and website contact forms.[9] |
| G0125 | HAFNIUM |
HAFNIUM has collected e-mail addresses for users they intended to target.[10] |
| G1001 | HEXANE |
HEXANE has targeted executives, human resources staff, and IT personnel for spearphishing.[11][12] |
| G0094 | Kimsuky |
Kimsuky has collected valid email addresses that were subsequently used in spearphishing campaigns.[13] |
| G1004 | LAPSUS$ |
LAPSUS$ has gathered employee email addresses, including personal accounts, for social engineering and initial access efforts.[14] |
| G0032 | Lazarus Group |
Lazarus Group collected email addresses belonging to various departments of a targeted organization which were used in follow-on phishing campaigns.[15] |
| G0059 | Magic Hound |
Magic Hound has identified high-value email accounts in academia, journalism, NGO's, foreign policy, and national security for targeting.[16][17] |
| G0034 | Sandworm Team |
Sandworm Team has obtained valid emails addresses while conducting research against target organizations that were subsequently used in spearphishing campaigns.[18] |
| G0122 | Silent Librarian |
Silent Librarian has collected e-mail addresses from targeted organizations from open Internet searches.[19] |
| G0127 | TA551 |
TA551 has used spoofed company emails that were acquired from email clients on previously infected hosts to target other individuals.[20] |
| 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 | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0029 | Network Traffic | Network Traffic Content |
Monitor for suspicious network traffic that could be indicative of probing for email addresses and/or usernames, 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. |