Adversaries may search freely available websites and/or domains for information about victims that can be used during targeting. Information about victims may be available in various online sites, such as social media, new sites, or those hosting information about business operations such as hiring or requested/rewarded contracts.[1][2][3]
Adversaries may search in different online sites depending on what information they seek to gather. Information from these sources may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: Phishing for Information or Search Open Technical Databases), establishing operational resources (ex: Establish Accounts or Compromise Accounts), and/or initial access (ex: External Remote Services or Phishing).
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| G0034 | Sandworm Team |
Sandworm Team researched Ukraine's unique legal entity identifier (called an "EDRPOU" number), including running queries on the EDRPOU website, in preparation for the NotPetya attack. Sandworm Team has also researched third-party websites to help it craft credible spearphishing emails.[4] |
| G1033 | Star Blizzard |
Star Blizzard has used open-source research to identify information about victims to use in targeting.[5][6] |
| G1017 | Volt Typhoon |
Volt Typhoon has conducted pre-compromise web searches for victim information.[7] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1013 | Application Developer Guidance |
Application developers uploading to public code repositories should be careful to avoid publishing sensitive information such as credentials and API keys. |
| M1047 | Audit |
Scan public code repositories for exposed credentials or other sensitive information before making commits. Ensure that any leaked credentials are removed from the commit history, not just the current latest version of the code. |
Much of this activity may have a very high occurrence and associated false positive rate, as well as potentially taking place outside the visibility of the target organization, making detection difficult for defenders.
Detection efforts may be focused on related stages of the adversary lifecycle, such as during Initial Access.