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T1592 Gather Victim Host Information

Adversaries may gather information about the victim’s hosts that can be used during targeting. Information about hosts may include a variety of details, including administrative data (ex: name, assigned IP, functionality, etc.) as well as specifics regarding its configuration (ex: operating system, language, etc.).

Adversaries may gather this information in various ways, such as direct collection actions via Active Scanning or Phishing for Information. Adversaries may also compromise sites then include malicious content designed to collect host information from visitors.1 Information about hosts may also be exposed to adversaries via online or other accessible data sets (ex: Social Media or Search Victim-Owned Websites). Gathering this information may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: Search Open Websites/Domains or Search Open Technical Databases), establishing operational resources (ex: Develop Capabilities or Obtain Capabilities), and/or initial access (ex: Supply Chain Compromise or External Remote Services).

Adversaries may also gather victim host information via User-Agent HTTP headers, which are sent to a server to identify the application, operating system, vendor, and/or version of the requesting user agent. This can be used to inform the adversary’s follow-on action. For example, adversaries may check user agents for the requesting operating system, then only serve malware for target operating systems while ignoring others.2

Item Value
ID T1592
Sub-techniques T1592.001, T1592.002, T1592.003, T1592.004
Tactics TA0043
Platforms PRE
Version 1.2
Created 02 October 2020
Last Modified 24 October 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G1017 Volt Typhoon Volt Typhoon has conducted pre-compromise reconnaissance for victim host information.4

Mitigations

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.

References

  1. Blasco, J. (2014, August 28). Scanbox: A Reconnaissance Framework Used with Watering Hole Attacks. Retrieved October 19, 2020. ↩

  2. Pham Duy Phuc, John Fokker J.E., Alejandro Houspanossian and Mathanraj Thangaraju. (2023, March 7). Qakbot Evolves to OneNote Malware Distribution. Retrieved August 1, 2024. ↩

  3. ThreatConnect. (2020, December 15). Infrastructure Research and Hunting: Boiling the Domain Ocean. Retrieved October 12, 2021. ↩

  4. CISA et al.. (2024, February 7). PRC State-Sponsored Actors Compromise and Maintain Persistent Access to U.S. Critical Infrastructure. Retrieved May 15, 2024. ↩