MITRE ATT&CK / Techniques / T1593.003

Search Open Websites/Domains: Code Repositories

ID
T1593.003
Tactics
TA0043 Reconnaissance
Sub-technique of
T1593 Search Open Websites/Domains
Platforms
PRE
Source
attack.mitre.org
MITRE last modified
12 May 2026

Adversaries may search public code repositories for information about victims that can be used during targeting. Victims may store code in repositories on various third-party websites such as GitHub, GitLab, SourceForge, and BitBucket. Users typically interact with code repositories through a web application or command-line utilities such as git.

Adversaries may search various public code repositories for various information about a victim. Public code repositories can often be a source of various general information about victims, such as commonly used programming languages and libraries as well as the names of employees. Adversaries may also identify more sensitive data, including accidentally leaked credentials or API keys.[1] Information from these sources may reveal opportunities for other forms of reconnaissance (ex: Phishing for Information), establishing operational resources (ex: Compromise Accounts or Compromise Infrastructure), and/or initial access (ex: Valid Accounts or Phishing).

**Note:** This is distinct from Code Repositories, which focuses on Collection from private and internally hosted code repositories.

Detection

Mitigations (2)

M1013 Application Developer Guidance

Application developers uploading to public code repositories should be careful to avoid publishing sensitive information such as credentials and API keys.

M1047 Audit

Scan public code repositories for exposed credentials or other sensitive information before making commits. Ensure that any leaked credentials are removed from the commit history, not just the current latest version of the code.

Groups (4)

Software (1)

References

  1. GitHub Cloud Service Credentials