SECAI Core · phase 11 of 15
Reconnaissance
The actions taken to gather information about an individual or organization's computer systems and software.
The Explain card
- Plain English
- Reconnaissance is the information-gathering phase before an attack: learning what systems, software, people, and exposures a target has, often quietly and from public sources.
- Example
- Before attacking a company's chatbot, an attacker reads its job postings to learn which LLM vendor and vector database it uses, then probes the API for version strings and error messages.
- Why it matters
- Every leaked detail, from model names in responses to verbose stack traces, shortens the attacker's path. Defenders reduce the footprint and watch for probing behavior.
- Hook
- Casing the joint before the heist.
Where it sits in the deck
Phase 11: Threat Landscape: Attack Vectors and Adversarial Techniques
With defences named, learn what they must defend against — the full catalogue of attack techniques targeting AI systems, their inputs, outputs, training pipelines, and supply chains.
