Your marketing team isn't the attacker. They're the terrain. This framework shows how commercial vendors walk the same steps as an adversary—from first script load to full commercial data exfiltration—and where Blackout cuts them off.
We detect and map every phase using outside-in reconnaissance—controlled browsers, honey tokens, and public web observation. No agents, no SDK, no credentials required.
CALLOUT · FOR MARKETERS
Marketing isn't the villain in this story. They're the team stuck between vendors optimizing for maximum data exhaust and security/legal teams who will own the breach, the fine, and the fallout when that intelligence leaks to competitors.
We borrowed the kill chain from security for one reason: GTM vendors follow the same pattern as an attacker, just with better branding. The problem isn't your marketing team—it's the tools wrapped around them, quietly escalating from basic tracking to full-blown commercial espionage on your pipeline, deals, and forecasts.
Click any phase below to see how it maps across malicious actors, GTM vendors, and what Blackout does about it.
A lot of people don't realize these tools are quietly pulling deal stages, pipeline forecasts, ACV bands, win/loss data, and feeding that intelligence back into data brokers. This is corporate espionage with better branding.
A single script, pixel, or tag gets embedded under "analytics" or "attribution." Nobody questions it.
Escalate from anonymous tracking to person-level identity. Email resolution, identity stitching, and account mapping kick in.
OAuth integrations and hidden scopes start pulling CRM/CDP data—deal stages, opportunity metadata, pipeline forecasts.
Session-level exhaust, behavioral fingerprints, and consent workarounds turn "measurement" into continuous monitoring.
Pipeline forecasts, ACV bands, win/loss patterns, and buying committee behavior leave your environment and feed someone else's models.
Attribution dependencies and reporting breaks make removal painful enough that no one wants to rip it out.
Your competitive intelligence becomes someone else's "enrichment" product. Your deal patterns train their AI. Your losses fund their growth.
THE_GTM_KILL_CHAIN · FORENSICS
Scanning target networks, identifying vulnerabilities, mapping attack surface
Scanning your stack via BuiltWith/ZoomInfo to map your tech spend, headcount, and budget signals before you even know they exist
We identify which vendors are already watching you and what data trails lead back to their targeting engines
Creating malware payload, packaging exploit with backdoor
Packaging data extraction inside a useful-looking widget. The form builder isn't free—you're paying with contact and behavioral data
We deobfuscate and analyze vendor scripts before they touch your org—documenting what data they capture and where it goes
Phishing email, drive-by download, USB drop, watering hole
Hiding inside "Certified Partner" ecosystems (HubSpot, Salesforce AppExchange) to inherit trust they haven't earned
We flag vendors who use certification badges to mask excessive data access—certified doesn't mean safe
Triggering vulnerability, executing code, privilege escalation
Social engineering your marketer into clicking "Allow" on scopes that grant access to contacts, deals, pipeline stages, and revenue data
We diff vendor claims vs observed behavior from the public web—controlled sessions, captures, and HARs. No access to your CRM, CDP, or data warehouse
Installing backdoor, establishing persistence, creating scheduled tasks
Refresh tokens that survive employee departures, password changes, and "revoked" access—a permanent backdoor into your CRM and pipeline
We map which vendors have long-lived tokens and flag dormant or over-privileged grants that should have been revoked
Establishing C2 channel, remote access, data exfiltration tunnel
Quietly siphoning deal stages, pipeline forecasts, ACV bands, win/loss patterns, and buying committee signals back to vendor infrastructure
We identify exfil paths purely from runtime egress—what leaves the browser and where it goes—so you can contain or cut it off without agents or credentials
Data theft, ransomware deployment, lateral movement, mission complete
Reselling your pipeline intelligence to competitors, training AI on your deal patterns, or feeding your win/loss data into "enrichment" products others can buy
We deliver forensic evidence packs for legal remediation and map the technical cut points to sever the data hose
Every vendor in our database is tagged with their kill chain stages. See where your tools operate.