Activity timeline
T1420 first appeared in tracked threats on and was most recently reported on . The busiest month was 2026-07 with 4 reports, and 13 of the 13 threats were reported in the twelve months to 2026-09.
How adversaries use it
T1420 File and Directory Discovery is catalogued by MITRE ATT&CK under the Discovery (Mobile) tactic in the Mobile matrix. Threadlinqs maps 13 of 2623 tracked threats (0.5%) to it; by severity that is 3 critical, 10 high.
Threats that use T1420 most often also use T1426 System Information Discovery (11 threats), T1429 Audio Capture (9 threats), T1430 Location Tracking (9 threats), T1646 Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (9 threats), T1414 Clipboard Data (8 threats). These are the techniques an intrusion set tends to chain with it, so they are the natural next places to look when it is observed.
2 tracked threat actors appear in the threats that use T1420; the most frequent are APT37 (1), Intellexa Consortium (1).
Mitigations
MITRE ATT&CK lists 1 mitigation for T1420.
Threat actors using it
Tracked threats
13 tracked threats use T1420.
- FomoPeek iOS App Store Poisoning: Kernel Exploit Framework Steals Crypto Private Keys via Keychain Decryptioncritical
- Gigabud Android Banking Trojan Clones Banking Apps via Hidden Work Profile (Vwork/GoldFactory)high
- Serbian Authorities Deploy Pegasus and NoviSpy Spyware Against Journalists, Opposition Politicians, and…high
- Apple Patches ImageIO Integer Overflow (CVE-2026-65346) Exploitable via Malicious Imageshigh
- Inside the Underground Business of the BTMOB Android RAT Malware-as-a-Servicehigh
- Copybara Android RAT Delivered via Fake N26 Support Vishing Callshigh
- Glitch SPY Android RAT Distributed via Fake Polish Rental App ("Tutaj Dom") Using Brokewell Loaderhigh
- Pegasus Spyware Used Against Former MEP Stelios Kouloglou While Serving on PEGA Committeecritical
- European Parliament Member Investigating Pegasus Spyware Hacked With Pegasus (PWNYOURHOME Zero-Click Exploit…critical
- Pegasus Spyware (PWNYOURHOME Zero-Click Chain) Used Against European Parliament PEGA Committee Member…high
- ScarCruft (APT37) BirdCall Android Variant — Multiplatform Supply-Chain Attack via sqgame[.]com[.]cn…high
- Predator Spyware: Undocumented iOS Kernel Exploitation Engine (FDGuardNeonRW, PAC Bypass, RWTransfer)high
- SURXRAT Android RAT — LLM Module Downloads from Hugging Face, MaaS via Telegram, ArsinkRAT Evolutionhigh
Detection coverage
Threadlinqs maintains 12 detection rules mapped to T1420 (SPL 3, KQL 2, Sigma 7). Rule content is available to Blue tier accounts and above; this page shows counts only.