Think Like the Enemy

Think Like a Hacker: How Understanding the Adversary Makes You a Better CTI Analyst

In cyber threat intelligence, the best analysts don’t just collect data, they understand people and human behaviors. Behind every phishing email, malware strain, or ransomware note is a human being making decisions, following incentives, limited to their personal resources and adapting to their environment. When you learn to think like a hacker, you move beyond the surface of technical indicators and start understanding why attacks happen, not just how. This shift in perspective is what transforms CTI from a reactive process into a strategic capability that truly helps organizations stay ahead of threats.

Seeing the Human Behind the Threat

Cyber threat intelligence often starts with questions like “What tool was used?” or “What vulnerability was exploited?” However a stronger question is, “Why would an attacker choose this method?” Understanding an adversary’s motives helps you make sense of their actions and anticipate their next moves.

Take ransomware, for example. A financially motivated group like LockBit doesn’t care what industry you’re in they care about return on investment. Their attacks tend to focus on organizations that can pay quickly, often using recycled code and proven methods to minimize risk. On the other hand, an espionage-focused group such as APT29 (linked to Russian intelligence) operates with a different goal: long-term, stealthy access. They’ll trade speed for subtlety, often using legitimate tools like PowerShell or scheduled tasks to blend in with normal network activity.

Once you start thinking in terms of goals and risk tolerance, you see that the tools themselves aren’t the story they’re clues. That’s where criminology meets cybersecurity: both fields rely on understanding human behavior to predict future actions.

Adopting the Criminology Mindset

Criminology offers several ways to better understand adversaries. One is incentive modeling, looking at what drives the behavior. Hackers, like any other group, respond to incentives. Financially motivated actors want fast payouts; hacktivists want visibility and influence; state-sponsored actors want access and control. When you understand these motivators, you can better predict which systems, data, or organizations are most appealing targets. It's important to remember though we as defenders may have bias towards these groups, they operate within their own ideologies, and it's imperative to stay flexible in our thinking.

Another helpful view is routine activity theory, which suggests that crime happens when three conditions align: a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardianship. Translated into cyber terms, that means an attack is likely when an adversary has both the motivation (financial or ideological), a vulnerable target (unpatched systems, exposed credentials), and limited defensive visibility. For CTI analysts, this model is a reminder that improving defenses is often less about being perfect and more about removing the easiest opportunities.

Finally, there’s contextual empathy. This doesn’t mean sympathizing with threat actors, it means being able to see the world through their eyes. Ask yourself: if I were this actor, what information would I need? What mistakes would I avoid? What tools would make my job easier? That kind of thinking helps analysts anticipate an attacker’s behavior and design detections before an incident happens.

From Indicators to Intent

A common pitfall in CTI is over-focusing on indicators of compromise, hashes, IP addresses, URLs. These are valuable, but they’re fleeting. A truly effective analyst looks for patterns of behavior, because behavior is much harder to change than infrastructure.

Imagine you detect a phishing campaign that installs a remote access trojan (RAT). If the attacker is financially motivated, they might pivot quickly to exfiltrate data or deploy ransomware. If they’re espionage-driven, they may wait days or weeks, silently gathering information. Those behavioral differences tell you how to prioritize response.

By mapping actions to frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, you can start identifying the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) that define an adversary’s “personality.” Over time, these patterns form the basis for profiling threat groups and predicting future operations.

Structured Thinking: Turning Curiosity into Insight

Good CTI work relies on structured thinking. One powerful method is the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), which helps analysts navigate uncertainty. Suppose you’re investigating credential theft across multiple organizations. Is it one actor targeting many companies, or several unrelated groups using the same tool? Instead of jumping to conclusions, list your hypotheses, gather evidence for and against each, and see which theory stands strongest. This structured skepticism helps reduce bias and improves accuracy.

Another approach is to think through the Cyber Kill Chain: reconnaissance, weaponization, delivery, exploitation, installation, command and control, and actions on objectives. Understanding where a threat actor invests their time and resources tells you where you can best disrupt them. For example, a group known for phishing-heavy delivery might be easiest to stop through stronger email filtering and awareness campaigns, while those focused on persistence require better endpoint visibility and hunt operations.

Putting It into Practice

To start thinking like an adversary, practice turning every incident into a story about human behavior. Instead of reporting “a phishing email with a malicious attachment,” describe it as “an actor attempting to gain a foothold through social engineering, likely seeking initial access for credential theft.” That phrasing keeps the focus on intent, not just activity.

Build simple adversary playbooks that summarize what motivates an actor, what techniques they use, what infrastructure they rely on, and how defenders can counter them. Over time, these playbooks become invaluable resources for SOC teams and leadership alike.

You can also apply this mindset to threat hunting. Instead of starting with an indicator, start with a question: “If I were this threat actor, how would I move laterally?” That’s where you’ll find the clues others miss.

Ethical Curiosity

Thinking like a hacker doesn’t mean acting like one. The purpose is to understand, not to replicate. Ethical boundaries are what separate CTI professionals from the adversaries they study. Always conduct research in legal environments with explicit permission, sandboxed labs, approved simulations, or red team exercises. The best analysts stay curious but grounded in integrity.

Bringing It All Together

At its core, thinking like a hacker is about empathy, pattern recognition, and disciplined curiosity. It’s the difference between seeing a security event as a random act and seeing it as part of a larger campaign driven by intent. When analysts understand why adversaries act the way they do, they move from reacting to predicting, and that’s where real defense begins.

The next time you’re analyzing a phishing lure, malware sample, or dark web post, pause and ask: What’s the endgame here? Who benefits? The answers to those questions often tell you more about your adversary than any indicator ever could.