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Threat actor

AccessData

Last fetched

AccessData is a threat actor tracked in WhisperGraph's MITRE ATT&CK corpus, observed using 0 techniques.

Description

AccessData Group was a U.S.-based cybersecurity company that developed digital forensics investigation technology. The company created the Forensic Toolkit (FTK), which became an industry-standard tool for extracting and analyzing data from digital devices. The technology was used by law enforcement agencies worldwide, including in Nigeria, where it was employed alongside other forensic tools for extracting information from seized devices. AccessData's merger with Exterro created a powerful surveillance conglomerate. Their combined digital forensics and data extraction capabilities give law enforcement and government agencies unprecedented access to personal information, particularly given the company's two-decade history of developing tools that can crack passwords, decrypt files, and extract sensitive personal data from devices without user consent. AccessData's Forensic Toolkit (FTK) was also used by Botswana's Police Service Digital Forensics Laboratory alongside Cellebrite's UFED to conduct invasive searches of journalists' devices. The technology was deployed in the case of Oratile Dikologang, a digital editor, where police "successfully extracted" and "thoroughly analyzed" thousands of messages, contacts, images, audio files, videos, and social media accounts from his phone. When contacted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) about this surveillance activity, AccessData and its parent company Exterro declined to respond to questions about their technology's use in Botswana's press freedom violations.

Techniques by tactic

No ATT&CK techniques are recorded for AccessData in WhisperGraph.

Attributed infrastructure

None published. WhisperGraph carries no ATTRIBUTED_TO edge to AccessData today — this states the absence of a published link, not that AccessData has no infrastructure.

References

© The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation.

Related pages

Pivot from AccessData into its techniques, tactics and any attributed infrastructure.

Queries

Resolves the slug to this actor, merging every duplicate node sharing the same name.


MATCH (a:ACTOR)
WHERE a.name =~ $pattern OR any(x IN a.aliases WHERE x =~ $pattern)
RETURN a.id AS id, a.name AS name, a.aliases AS aliases, a.description AS description,
       a.references AS references, a.campaigns AS campaigns
LIMIT 25
Run yourself →

Techniques this actor uses, grouped by the tactic each one serves.


MATCH (a:ACTOR {name: $name})-[:USES_TECHNIQUE]->(t:ATTACK_PATTERN)
OPTIONAL MATCH (t)-[:USES_TACTIC]->(tac:ATTACK_PATTERN)
RETURN t.id AS techniqueId, t.name AS techniqueName, tac.id AS tacticId, tac.name AS tacticName
LIMIT 1000
Run yourself →

Infrastructure publicly attributed to this actor.


MATCH (n)-[:ATTRIBUTED_TO]->(a:ACTOR {name: $name})
RETURN labels(n)[0] AS kind, n.name AS name
LIMIT 25
Run yourself →

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