- Tactics
- Reconnaissance
- Platforms
- PRE
- Reference
- attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1596.003
Description
Adversaries may search public digital certificate data for information about victims that can be used during targeting. Digital certificates are issued by a certificate authority (CA) in order to cryptographically verify the origin of signed content. These certificates, such as those used for encrypted web traffic (HTTPS SSL/TLS communications), contain information about the registered organization such as name and location.
Adversaries may search digital certificate data to gather actionable information. Threat actors can use online resources and lookup tools to harvest information about certificates.(Citation: SSLShopper Lookup) Digital certificate data may also be available from artifacts signed by the organization (ex: certificates used from encrypted web traffic are served with content).(Citation: Medium SSL Cert) Information from these sources may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: Active Scanning or Phishing for Information), establishing operational resources (ex: Develop Capabilities or Obtain Capabilities), and/or initial access (ex: External Remote Services or Trusted Relationship).
How GTK Cyber trains on this
GTK Cyber's Threat Hunting with Data Science course teaches you to build machine-learning detections for techniques like this across the MITRE ATT&CK framework, including the Reconnaissance tactic this technique falls under. Practitioner-led, focused on real detections, not memorizing technique IDs.
Related techniques
- T1589 - Gather Victim Identity Information
- T1590 - Gather Victim Network Information
- T1591 - Gather Victim Org Information
- T1592 - Gather Victim Host Information
- T1593 - Search Open Websites/Domains
- T1594 - Search Victim-Owned Websites
- T1595 - Active Scanning
- T1596 - Search Open Technical Databases
- T1597 - Search Closed Sources
- T1598 - Phishing for Information
- T1681 - Search Threat Vendor Data
- T1682 - Query Public AI Services