Adversaries may attempt to get a listing of valid accounts, usernames, or email addresses on a system or within a compromised environment. This information can help adversaries determine which accounts exist, which can aid in follow-on behavior such as brute-forcing, spear-phishing attacks, or account takeovers (e.g., Valid Accounts).
Adversaries may use several methods to enumerate accounts, including abuse of existing tools, built-in commands, and potential misconfigurations that leak account names and roles or permissions in the targeted environment.
For examples, cloud environments typically provide easily accessible interfaces to obtain user lists.[1][2] On hosts, adversaries can use default PowerShell and other command line functionality to identify accounts. Information about email addresses and accounts may also be extracted by searching an infected system’s files.
| ID | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| G0143 | Aquatic Panda |
Aquatic Panda used the |
| G1016 | FIN13 |
FIN13 has enumerated all users and their roles from a victim's main treasury system.[4] |
| S0445 | ShimRatReporter |
ShimRatReporter listed all non-privileged and privileged accounts available on the machine.[5] |
| C0024 | SolarWinds Compromise |
During the SolarWinds Compromise, APT29 obtained a list of users and their roles from an Exchange server using |
| S1065 | Woody RAT |
Woody RAT can identify administrator accounts on an infected machine.[7] |
| S0658 | XCSSET |
XCSSET attempts to discover accounts from various locations such as a user's Evernote, AppleID, Telegram, Skype, and WeChat data.[8] |
| ID | Mitigation | Description |
|---|---|---|
| M1028 | Operating System Configuration |
Prevent administrator accounts from being enumerated when an application is elevating through UAC since it can lead to the disclosure of account names. The Registry key is located |
| M1018 | User Account Management |
Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts. |
| ID | Data Source | Data Component | Detects |
|---|---|---|---|
| DS0017 | Command | Command Execution |
Monitor logs and other sources of command execution history for actions that could be taken to gather information about accounts, including the use of calls to cloud APIs that perform account discovery. System and network discovery techniques normally occur throughout an operation as an adversary learns the environment, and also to an extent in normal network operations. Therefore discovery data and events should not be viewed in isolation, but as part of a chain of behavior that could lead to other activities, such as Lateral Movement, based on the information obtained. |
| DS0022 | File | File Access |
Monitor access to file resources that contain local accounts and groups information such as If access requires high privileges, look for non-admin objects (such as users or processes) attempting to access restricted file resources. |
| DS0009 | Process | Process Creation |
Monitor for processes that can be used to enumerate user accounts and groups such as |