T1681Techniquereconnaissance

T1681Search Threat Vendor Data

Platforms: PRE

ATT&CK version: v19.1

What it is

Threat actors may seek information/indicators from closed or open threat intelligence sources gathered about their own campaigns, as well as those conducted by other adversaries that may align with their target industries, capabilities/objectives, or other operational concerns. These reports may include descriptions of behavior, detailed breakdowns of attacks, atomic indicators such as malware hashes or IP addresses, timelines of a group’s activity, and more. Adversaries may change their behavior when planning their future operations. Adversaries have been observed replacing atomic indicators mentioned in blog posts in under a week.(Citation: Google Cloud Threat Intelligence VMWare ESXi Zero-Day 2023) Adversaries have also been seen searching for their own domain names in threat vendor data and then taking them down, likely to avoid seizure or further investigation.(Citation: Sentinel One Contagious Interview ClickFix September 2025) This technique is distinct from [Threat Intel Vendors](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1597/001) in that it describes threat actors performing reconnaissance on their own activity, not in search of victim information.

ATT&CK tactics· 1

Reconnaissance

References

  1. https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1681
  2. https://www.sentinelone.com/labs/contagious-interview-threat-actors-scout-cyber-intel-platforms-reveal-plans-and-ops/
  3. https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/vmware-esxi-zero-day-bypass/
Sourced from MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v14.1. Curated and contextualized for EU compliance use cases by Adam Lundqvist, Founder at SQUR.