Platforms / Security resources

MITRE ATT&CK

Enterprise v20 / 15 tactics / 227 techniques / 479 sub-techniques

Defense Impairment / T1687

Exploitation for Defense Impairment

Technique / Enterprise ATT&CK

Official MITRE entry

Adversaries may exploit vulnerabilities in security software, infrastructure, or defensive components to degrade, disable, or otherwise continue to impair their ability to prevent, detect, or respond to malicious activity.

Adversaries may exploit a system or application vulnerability to directly interfere with defensive mechanisms. Exploitation occurs when an adversary takes advantage of a programming error in software, services, or the operating system to execute adversary-controlled code, often with the goal of weakening or disabling protections.

Vulnerabilities may exist in security tools such as antivirus, endpoint detection and response (EDR), firewalls, or other monitoring solutions. Adversaries may use prior reconnaissance or perform discovery activities (e.g., Software Discovery) to identify defensive tools present in an environment and target them for exploitation.

Successful exploitation may allow adversaries to terminate security processes, disable protections, bypass enforcement mechanisms, or reduce the effectiveness of defensive controls. In some cases, vulnerabilities in cloud-based or SaaS infrastructure may also be leveraged to bypass built-in security boundaries or disrupt visibility and enforcement across environments.(Citation: Salesforce zero-day in facebook phishing attack)

Source references

Source: MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v20, retrieved 2026-10-31. MITRE ATT&CK is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.