T1596.005sub-technique of T1596 Search Open Technical Databases

Scan Databases

PREnothing on this site yetT1596.005 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may search within public scan databases for information about victims that can be used during targeting. Various online services continuously publish the results of Internet scans/surveys, often harvesting information such as active IP addresses, hostnames, open ports, certificates, and even server banners. Adversaries may search scan databases to gather actionable information.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

how MITRE says to see it

Detection of Scan Databases

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
T1596.002 WHOIS · not covered yet
T1596.003 Digital Certificates · not covered yet
T1596.004 CDNs · 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.