T1588.004sub-technique of T1588 Obtain Capabilities

Digital Certificates

PREnothing on this site yetT1588.004 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may buy and/or steal SSL/TLS certificates that can be used during targeting. SSL/TLS certificates are designed to instill trust. They include information about the key, information about its owner's identity, and the digital signature of an entity that has verified the certificate's contents are correct.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

how MITRE says to see it

Detection of Digital Certificates

Consider use of services that may aid in the tracking of newly issued certificates and/or certificates in use on sites across the Internet. In some cases it may be possible to pivot on known pieces of certificate information to uncover other adversary infrastructure.

what reduces it

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.

the rest of T1588

T1588.001 Malware · not covered yet
T1588.002 Tool · not covered yet
T1588.003 Code Signing Certificates · not covered yet
T1588.005 Exploits · not covered yet
T1588.006 Vulnerabilities · not covered yet
T1588.007 Artificial Intelligence · not covered yet

The description, detection analytics and mitigations are reproduced from MITRE ATT&CK, version 19.2, under its terms of use. The checklists, hunts, labs and everything else linked here are this site’s.