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MITRE ATT&CK® Technique

T1114.002: Remote Email Collection

Adversaries may target an Exchange server, Office 365, or Google Workspace to collect sensitive information. Adversaries may leverage a user's credentials and interact directly with the Exchange server to acquire information from within a network. Adversaries may also access externally facing Exchange services, Office 365, or Google Workspace to access email using credentials or access tokens. Tools such as MailSniper can be used to automate searches for specific keywords.

EnterpriseT1114.002Sub-techniqueObject v1.3 Modified
Glexia's Take

Analyst context for executives and security teams

Analyst confidence High

Remote Email Collection matters because email systems often hold the organization’s most sensitive operational, legal, financial, and incident-response information. ATT&CK describes adversaries using credentials or access tokens to access Exchange, Office 365, or Google Workspace and collect mail remotely. For leaders, this is less about malware and more about whether identity controls, mail-access monitoring, and incident communications can withstand a compromised account or token.

Executive priority

Prioritize this as an identity and cloud-email resilience issue. The business risk is exposure of sensitive communications, trade secrets, personal information, and potentially details about ongoing response operations. Executives should ask whether MFA is enforced for critical mail access, whether abnormal login and programmatic mailbox access are visible to the SOC, and whether out-of-band communications are ready if email cannot be trusted during an incident.

Technical view

This is an ATT&CK collection sub-technique for Office Suite and Windows environments involving Exchange, Office 365, or Google Workspace access with credentials or access tokens. MITRE does not provide native detection text for this object, but the related detection strategy DET0048 points defenders toward abnormal login and programmatic access analytics. SOC and IR teams should validate visibility into remote mailbox access, authentication context, token-based access, automated or scripted email searches, and high-volume or unusual mailbox queries. Relationship context also links this behavior to Email Collection T1114 and to tools such as MailSniper, which can automate keyword searches in Microsoft Exchange environments.

Likely telemetry

  • Cloud email audit logs for Exchange, Office 365, or Google Workspace
  • Authentication logs including MFA status, source location, device, user agent, and access-token activity
  • Mailbox access and search audit events
  • Programmatic access indicators such as API, EWS, or scripted client activity where available
  • Administrative mailbox search or cross-mailbox access records

Detection direction

  • Validate DET0048-style analytics for abnormal login and programmatic access rather than relying only on malware alerts.
  • Baseline normal mailbox access by role, geography, device, client type, and volume; tune for executives, administrators, legal, finance, and incident-response personnel.
  • Look for unusual mailbox search behavior, access to many mailboxes, keyword-driven searches, or access patterns inconsistent with the user’s normal workflow.
  • Correlate identity events with email audit events so credential or token misuse is not missed when no endpoint malware is present.
  • Account for false positives from legitimate eDiscovery, compliance searches, migrations, delegated access, and administrative support activity.

Mitigation priorities

  • Enforce multi-factor authentication for email and other critical systems, consistent with related mitigation M1032.
  • Protect sensitive information with encryption at rest, in transit, and during processing where applicable, consistent with M1041.
  • Establish secure out-of-band communications for incident coordination so response plans are not dependent on potentially compromised email, consistent with M1060.
  • Review privileged mailbox access, delegated permissions, and administrative search capabilities to limit unnecessary collection opportunity.
  • Ensure cloud-email audit logging, alerting, and retention are treated as core security controls, not optional productivity-platform settings.
Analyst notes and limits

ATT&CK links this technique to multiple campaigns, groups, and software, including SolarWinds Compromise, HomeLand Justice, APT29, APT28, HAFNIUM, FIN4, LightNeuron, and MailSniper. These relationships support the defensive importance of monitoring remote email access, but they should not be interpreted as evidence that any specific organization is currently targeted. The most decision-useful local test is whether the SOC can connect identity compromise indicators to mailbox collection evidence quickly enough to support containment and disclosure decisions.

MITRE provides no official detection text for this technique, so detection guidance here is derived from the official description, platforms, tactic, and supplied relationships, especially DET0048 and the listed mitigations. Local email platform configuration, audit-log availability, licensing, retention, and identity architecture will determine actual coverage.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Remote Email Collection

Adversaries may target an Exchange server, Office 365, or Google Workspace to collect sensitive information. Adversaries may leverage a user's credentials and interact directly with the Exchange server to acquire information from within a network. Adversaries may also access externally facing Exchange services, Office 365, or Google Workspace to access email using credentials or access tokens. Tools such as MailSniper can be used to automate searches for specific keywords.

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

How security teams should use this page

Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.

ATT&CK relationship table

Related techniques

This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.

1 rows
Domain ID Name Relationship / procedure
Enterprise T1114 Email Collection This object subtechnique of Email Collection.
Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

Group Enterprise

G0004: Ke3chang

Ke3chang is a threat group attributed to actors operating out of China. Ke3chang has targeted oil, government, diplomatic, military, and NGOs in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, and North America since at least 2010.[1][2][3][4]

Group Enterprise

G0007: APT28

APT28 is a threat group that has been attributed to Russia's General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) 85th Main Special Service Center (GTsSS) military unit 26165.[1][2] This group has been active since at least 2004.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

APT28 reportedly compromised the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2016 in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.[5] In 2018, the US indicted five GRU Unit 26165 officers associated with APT28 for cyber operations (including close-access operations) conducted between 2014 and 2018 against the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the US Anti-Doping Agency, a US nuclear facility, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Spiez Swiss Chemicals Laboratory, and other organizations.[14] Some of these were conducted with the assistance of GRU Unit 74455, which is also referred to as Sandworm Team.

Group Enterprise

G1055: VOID MANTICORE

VOID MANTICORE is a threat group assessed to operate on behalf of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).[1] Active since at least mid-2022, VOID MANTICORE has targeted government entities, critical infrastructure, and private sector organizations across Albania, Israel, and the United States.[1][2] VOID MANTICORE conducts destructive cyber operations, combining wiper attacks with hack-and-leak campaigns. The group has operated under multiple public-facing personas, including HomeLand Justice in operations against Albania, Karma and Karma Below in campaigns targeting Israeli organizations, and Handala Hack, its current primary persona, which has claimed activity against Israeli and U.S. entities, including a March 2026 attack against Stryker Corporation.[1][3] VOID MANTICORE has been observed collaborating with Scarred Manticore, which has been linked to initial access operations preceding VOID MANTICORE’s activity.[4]

Group Enterprise

G1033: Star Blizzard

Star Blizzard is a cyber espionage and influence group originating in Russia that has been active since at least 2019. Star Blizzard campaigns align closely with Russian state interests and have included persistent phishing and credential theft against academic, defense, government, NGO, and think tank organizations in NATO countries, particularly the US and the UK.[1][2][3][4]

Group Enterprise

G0006: APT1

APT1 is a Chinese threat group that has been attributed to the 2nd Bureau of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Staff Department’s (GSD) 3rd Department, commonly known by its Military Unit Cover Designator (MUCD) as Unit 61398. [1]

Group Enterprise

G0016: APT29

APT29 is threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).[1][2] They have operated since at least 2008, often targeting government networks in Europe and NATO member countries, research institutes, and think tanks. APT29 reportedly compromised the Democratic National Committee starting in the summer of 2015.[3][4][5][6]

In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to the SVR; public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[7][8] Industry reporting also referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, StellarParticle, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[9][10][11][12][13][14]

Group Enterprise

G0125: HAFNIUM

HAFNIUM is a likely state-sponsored cyber espionage group operating out of China that has been active since at least January 2021. HAFNIUM primarily targets entities in the US across a number of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs. HAFNIUM has targeted remote management tools and cloud software for intial access and has demonstrated an ability to quickly operationalize exploits for identified vulnerabilities in edge devices.[1][2][3]

Group Enterprise

G0059: Magic Hound

Magic Hound is an Iranian-sponsored threat group that conducts long term, resource-intensive cyber espionage operations, likely on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. They have targeted European, U.S., and Middle Eastern government and military personnel, academics, journalists, and organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), via complex social engineering campaigns since at least 2014.[1][2][3][4][5]

Group Enterprise

G0114: Chimera

Chimera is a suspected China-based threat group that has been active since at least 2018 targeting the semiconductor industry in Taiwan as well as data from the airline industry.[1][2]

Group Enterprise

G0035: Dragonfly

Dragonfly is a cyber espionage group that has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) Center 16.[1][2] Active since at least 2010, Dragonfly has targeted defense and aviation companies, government entities, companies related to industrial control systems, and critical infrastructure sectors worldwide through supply chain, spearphishing, and drive-by compromise attacks.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Group Enterprise

G0085: FIN4

FIN4 is a financially-motivated threat group that has targeted confidential information related to the public financial market, particularly regarding healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, since at least 2013.[1][2] FIN4 is unique in that they do not infect victims with typical persistent malware, but rather they focus on capturing credentials authorized to access email and other non-public correspondence.[1][3]

Group Enterprise

G0077: Leafminer

Leafminer is an Iranian threat group that has targeted government organizations and business entities in the Middle East since at least early 2017. [1]

Tool Enterprise

S0413: MailSniper

MailSniper is a penetration testing tool for searching through email in a Microsoft Exchange environment for specific terms (passwords, insider intel, network architecture information, etc.). It can be used by a non-administrative user to search their own email, or by an Exchange administrator to search the mailboxes of every user in a domain.[1]

WindowsOffice Suite
Malware Enterprise

S0395: LightNeuron

LightNeuron is a sophisticated backdoor that has targeted Microsoft Exchange servers since at least 2014. LightNeuron has been used by Turla to target diplomatic and foreign affairs-related organizations. The presence of certain strings in the malware suggests a Linux variant of LightNeuron exists.[1]

WindowsLinux
Malware Enterprise

S0476: Valak

Valak is a multi-stage modular malware that can function as a standalone information stealer or downloader, first observed in 2019 targeting enterprises in the US and Germany.[1][2]

Windows
Campaign Enterprise

C0024: SolarWinds Compromise

The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.[1] Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[2][3][4][5][1][6][7][8]

In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[9][10][11] The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.[12]

Campaign Enterprise

C0038: HomeLand Justice

HomeLand Justice was a disruptive cyber campaign conducted by Iranian state-affiliated actors against Albanian government networks in July and September 2022. The activity combined ransomware, wiper malware, and data leak operations. Initial access for HomeLand Justice was established as early as May 2021, and threat actors moved laterally, exfiltrated sensitive information, and maintained persistence for approximately 14 months prior to the destructive phase of the operation. Responsibility was claimed by the "HomeLand Justice" front, which framed the campaign as retaliation against the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group with a presence in Albania. Multiple Iran-nexus groups are assessed to have participated in the campaign, including HEXANE who probed victim infrastructure.[1][2][3] A second wave of attacks was launched in September 2022 using similar tactics following public attribution of the previous activity to Iran and the severing of diplomatic ties between Iran and Albania.[3]

Campaign Enterprise

C0063: 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks

2025 Poland Wiper Attacks is a Russian state-sponsored campaign that conducted destructive cyberattacks against Polish energy infrastructure in December 2025. Targets included more than 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, and a manufacturing sector company. The attacks on the distributed energy resources (DER) disrupted communications between affected facilities and the distribution system operator, but did not impact electricity generation or heat supply. Across the campaign, threat actors deployed two previously undocumented wiper tools, DynoWiper, a Windows-based wiper and LazyWiper, a PowerShell wiper, distributed via malicious Group Policy Objects. At the CHP plant, threat actors had maintained access since at least March 2025, using that foothold to obtain credentials and move laterally before attempting wiper deployment. Some reporting has assessed the activity to be consistent with Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) threat activity group Dragonfly, also tracked as STATIC TUNDRA, while other reporting attributes the destructive wiper activities to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) threat activity group ELECTRUM, also tracked as Sandworm Team.[1][2][3][4]

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

Mitigations

Mitigation direction

Change history

Object version and sync metadata

The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .

ATT&CK release
19.1
Object version
1.3
Created
Modified
Raw hash
a7802f16b7585fe7...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
Release Bundle imported Object version Modified Status Raw hash
19.1 1.3 Current bundle a7802f16b758…
Raw source

Mirrored ATT&CK source object

The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.

Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    mitre-attack T1114.002
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.