216.73.217.22

T1593.002: Search Engines

View on MITRE ATT&CK The MITRE Corporation · Published 16/12/2025 19:38 · Modified 27/03/2026 01:10

Essential information

MITRE technique ID
T1593.002
Confidence
100/100
Revoked
No
Published
16/12/2025 19:38
Modified
27/03/2026 01:10
Author / Source
The MITRE Corporation

Aliases

T1593.002

Platforms

PRE

Description

Adversaries may use search engines to collect information about victims that can be used during targeting. Search engine services typical crawl online sites to index context and may provide users with specialized syntax to search for specific keywords or specific types of content (i.e. filetypes).(Citation: SecurityTrails Google Hacking)(Citation: ExploitDB GoogleHacking) Adversaries may craft various search engine queries depending on what information they seek to gather. Threat actors may use search engines to harvest general information about victims, as well as use specialized queries to look for spillages/leaks of sensitive information such as network details or credentials. Information from these sources may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: [Phishing for Information](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1598) or [Search Open Technical Databases](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1596)), establishing operational resources (ex: [Establish Accounts](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1585) or [Compromise Accounts](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1586)), and/or initial access (ex: [Valid Accounts](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1078) or [Phishing](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1566)).

Kill chain phases

Kill chainPhase
mitre-attack reconnaissance

Marking (TLP)

TLP:CLEAR Copyright 2015-2025, The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation.

External references