T1596.002sub-technique of T1596 Search Open Technical Databases

WHOIS

PREnothing on this site yetT1596.002 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may search public WHOIS data for information about victims that can be used during targeting. WHOIS data is stored by regional Internet registries (RIR) responsible for allocating and assigning Internet resources such as domain names. Anyone can query WHOIS servers for information about a registered domain, such as assigned IP blocks, contact information, and DNS nameservers. Adversaries may search WHOIS data to gather actionable information.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

how MITRE says to see it

Detection of WHOIS

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.

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. Efforts should focus on minimizing the amount and sensitivity of data available to external parties.

the rest of T1596

T1596.001 DNS/Passive DNS · not covered yet
T1596.003 Digital Certificates · not covered yet
T1596.004 CDNs · not covered yet
T1596.005 Scan Databases · 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.