MITRE ATT&CK v20 (13 Oct): new techniques for direct and indirect prompt injection, AI-enabled exfiltration, AI result poisoning and impairing autonomous defences; new campaigns for US water utility attacks and an AI-assisted breach of Mexican government systems
MITRE released ATT&CK v20 on 13 October 2026, updating techniques, groups, campaigns and software across the Enterprise, Mobile and ICS matrices. MITRE says the biggest change is broader coverage of recent adversary activity, including AI-focused and AI-enabled techniques. New Enterprise techniques are Direct Prompt Injection, Indirect Prompt Injection, AI-Enabled Exfiltration, Stage Capabilities: AI Result Poisoning, Disable or Modify Tools: Impair Autonomous Defenses, Anti-Automation Evasion (with sub-techniques for automating CAPTCHA completion and avoiding CAPTCHA) and Steal Application Specific Passwords, each with new detection strategies. Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Dependencies and Development Tools moves to version 2.0. New campaigns are '2026 U.S. Water Utilities Attacks' (ICS) and 'AI-Assisted Breach of Mexico's Government Infrastructure'. New groups are NIMBUS MANTICORE and The Gentlemen (whose ransomware is also added as software), and Salt Typhoon and APT38 entries get major revisions. ICS gains execution techniques for command and scripting interpreters (PowerShell, Python, JavaScript, Unix shell, Visual Basic, Windows command shell) and command and control over DNS and publish/subscribe protocols, while the older ICS Command-Line Interface and Scripting techniques are deprecated. Mobile un-deprecates Deliver Malicious Application via Other Means. The release counts 971 software entries, 182 groups and 61 campaigns; Enterprise now has 227 techniques and 479 sub-techniques. Why it matters: teams that map detections, threat models or red-team plans to ATT&CK now have standard IDs for prompt-injection and AI-agent abuse, and ICS teams have script-execution techniques to map. Primary: MITRE ATT&CK October 2026 update notes; context: ATT&CK v20 blog post; wire: Cyber Security News.
- Product
- MITRE ATT&CK knowledge base (Enterprise, Mobile, ICS)
- Versions
- ATT&CK v20.0 (replaces v19.2)
- Exploited in Australia?
- unknown
- Patch to
- Update ATT&CK data in SIEM/SOAR content, threat-model templates and coverage dashboards to v20 (STIX on MITRE/CTI); add the new prompt-injection and AI-enabled exfiltration techniques to AI-agent threat models; ICS teams should remap script-execution detections from the deprecated Command-Line Interface and Scripting techniques to the new Command and Scripting Interpreter techniques.
Primary: MITRE ATT&CK — Updates, October 2026 (v20, 13 Oct 2026) · Vendor: MITRE ATT&CK blog — ATT&CK v20: critical infrastructure campaigns, adversary use and abuse of AI, and Iranian cyber · Cyber Security News — MITRE ATT&CK v20 adds 9 new attack techniques covering AI exploits, MFA bypass and CAPTCHA evasion