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ATT&CK Technique

Browser Information Discovery

T1217 · discovery

Adversaries may enumerate information about browsers to learn more about compromised environments. Data saved by browsers (such as bookmarks, accounts, and browsing history) may reveal a variety of personal information about users (e.g., banking sites, relationships/interests, social media, etc.) as well as details about internal network resources such as servers, tools/dashboards, or other related infrastructure. Browser information may also highlight additional targets after an adversary has access to valid credentials, especially Credentials In Files associated with logins cached by a browser.

Specific storage locations vary based on platform and/or application, but browser information is typically stored in local files and databases (e.g., %APPDATA%/Google/Chrome).

LinuxmacOSWindows

Actors Using This

7
iranOilRig
israel_private_sector_mobile_forensics_cyber_mercenaryCellebrite
us_israel_joint_offensive_cyber_speculationGauss
predominantly_english_speaking_youth_organized_crimeLAPSUS$

Likely Attack Path

Techniques the same actors pair with this one distinctively - those showing up among actors who use this technique noticeably more than across all actors (lift > 1.15), grouped by kill-chain phase. The × is that lift multiplier; the shared-actor count is in the tooltip. A near-universal technique pairs with everything at baseline, so its list is short by design.
command-and-control later

Atomic Tests

11
Executable Atomic Red Team test cases for exercising this technique in a lab. Copy a command, run it on the listed platform, confirm your detections fire.
shlinuxList Mozilla Firefox Bookmark Database Files on FreeBSD/Linux
Searches for Mozilla Firefox's places.sqlite file (on FreeBSD or Linux distributions) that contains bookmarks and lists any found instances to a text file.
find / -path "*.mozilla/firefox/*/places.sqlite" 2>/dev/null -exec echo {} >> #{output_file} \;
cat #{output_file} 2>/dev/null
shmacosList Mozilla Firefox Bookmark Database Files on macOS
Searches for Mozilla Firefox's places.sqlite file (on macOS) that contains bookmarks and lists any found instances to a text file.
find / -path "*/Firefox/Profiles/*/places.sqlite" -exec echo {} >> #{output_file} \;
cat #{output_file} 2>/dev/null
shmacosList Google Chrome Bookmark JSON Files on macOS
Searches for Google Chrome's Bookmark file (on macOS) that contains bookmarks in JSON format and lists any found instances to a text file.
find / -path "*/Google/Chrome/*/Bookmarks" -exec echo {} >> #{output_file} \;
cat #{output_file} 2>/dev/null
shlinuxList Google Chromium Bookmark JSON Files on FreeBSD
Searches for Google Chromium's Bookmark file (on FreeBSD) that contains bookmarks in JSON format and lists any found instances to a text file.
find / -path "*/.config/chromium/*/Bookmarks" -exec echo {} >> #{output_file} \;
cat #{output_file} 2>/dev/null
powershellwindowsList Google Chrome / Opera Bookmarks on Windows with powershell
Searches for Google Chrome's and Opera's Bookmarks file (on Windows distributions) that contains bookmarks. Upon execution, paths that contain bookmark files will be displayed.
Get-ChildItem -Path C:\Users\ -Filter Bookmarks -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue -Force
command_promptwindowsList Google Chrome / Edge Chromium Bookmarks on Windows with command prompt
Searches for Google Chromes's and Edge Chromium's Bookmarks file (on Windows distributions) that contains bookmarks. Upon execution, paths that contain bookmark files will be displayed.
where /R C:\Users\ Bookmarks
command_promptwindowsList Mozilla Firefox bookmarks on Windows with command prompt
Searches for Mozilla Firefox bookmarks file (on Windows distributions) that contains bookmarks in a SQLITE database. Upon execution, paths that contain bookmark files will be displayed.
where /R C:\Users\ places.sqlite
command_promptwindowsList Internet Explorer Bookmarks using the command prompt
This test will list the bookmarks for Internet Explorer that are found in the Favorites folder
dir /s /b %USERPROFILE%\Favorites
shmacosList Safari Bookmarks on MacOS
This test searches for Safari's Bookmarks file (on macOS) and lists any found instances to a text file.
find / -path "*/Safari/Bookmarks.plist" 2>/dev/null >> #{output_file} 
cat #{output_file} 
powershellelevatedwindowsExtract Edge Browsing History
This test will extract Microsoft Edge browser's history of current user
$URL_Regex = '(htt(p|s))://([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+(/[\w- ./?%&=]*)*?'
$History = Get-Content -Path "#{history_path}" | Select-String -AllMatches $URL_Regex | ForEach-Object { $_.Matches.Value } | Sort -Unique
$History | Out-File -FilePath "#{dest_path}"
powershellelevatedwindowsExtract chrome Browsing History
This test will extract browsing history of the chrome user
$Username = (whoami).Split('\')[1]
$URL_Regex = '(htt(p|s))://([\w-]+\.)+[\w-]+(/[\w- ./?%&=]*)*?'
$History = Get-Content -Path "$Env:systemdrive\Users\$UserName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\History" | Select-String -AllMatches $URL_Regex | ForEach-Object { $_.Matches.Value } | Sort -Unique
$History | Out-File -FilePath "$Env:USERPROFILE\Downloads\chromebrowsinghistory.txt"

Detection Coverage

1/6 layers
Coverage across standard detection surfaces. Rows marked none have no rule of that type mapped. Some are real blind spots worth closing; others are simply not applicable to this technique (e.g. YARA matches malware files, not network behaviour).
Behavioral / log (Sigma) 4
Analytics (MITRE CAR) none
Runtime / container (Falco) none
File / malware (YARA) none
Network (Suricata/Snort) none
Vuln scan (Nuclei) none

Caldera Emulation

1
MITRE Caldera abilities that emulate this technique - each is an executable action for automated adversary emulation.
discoverydarwinGet Chrome Bookmarks
cat ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Bookmarks
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