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Every technique
T1110.004No distinct observable

Credential Stuffing

Credential AccessContainers, ESXi, IaaS, Identity Provider, Linux, macOS, Network Devices, Office Suite, SaaS, Windows

Where this stands

A reviewer read the telemetry and concluded there is nothing here to detect that a sibling technique does not already cover.

Credential stuffing is defined by volume and by credential provenance, and a single log record carries neither. All three of DET0460's analytics are explicitly counts over a window: AN1262 (Windows, Security 4625) is 'multiple failed authentication attempts using distinct username/password pairs from a single IP address or session within a short time window', tuned by UsernameUniquenessThreshold ('minimum number of unique usernames... before triggering alert'), TimeWindow and SourceIPScope; AN1263 (linux:syslog, SSH) is 'rapid login failures across different users from a single IP', tuned by LoginFailureRatio; AN1264 (macos:unifiedlog) is a 'burst of failed authentications with rotating usernames', tuned by DistinctUsernameCount. […]

Covered instead by T1110, T1110.001, T1110.003.

What the technique is

Adversaries may use credentials obtained from breach dumps of unrelated accounts to gain access to target accounts through credential overlap. Occasionally, large numbers of username and password pairs are dumped online when a website or service is compromised and the user account credentials accessed. The information may be useful to an adversary attempting to compromise accounts by taking advantage of the tendency for users to use the same passwords across personal and business accounts. Credential stuffing is a risky option because it could cause numerous authentication failures and account lockouts, depending on the organization's login failure policies. Typically, management services over commonly used ports are used when stuffing credentials. Commonly targeted services include the following: SSH (22/TCP) Telnet (23/TCP) FTP (21/TCP) NetBIOS / SMB / Samba (139/TCP & 445/TCP) LDAP (389/TCP) Kerberos (88/TCP) RDP / Terminal Services (3389/TCP) HTTP/HTTP Management Services (80/TCP & 443/TCP) MSSQL (1433/TCP) Oracle (1521/TCP) MySQL (3306/TCP) VNC (5900/TCP) In addition to management services, adversaries may "target single sign-on (SSO) and cloud-based applications utilizing federated authentication protocols," as well as externally facing email applications, such as Office 365.

Read it on attack.mitre.org

What MITRE says you would watch

  • AN1262

    Multiple failed authentication attempts using distinct username/password pairs from a single IP address or session within a short time window, targeting common services like RDP or SMB

  • AN1263

    Rapid login failures across different users from a single IP address, targeting SSH or PAM login with distinct username-password pairs

  • AN1264

    Burst of failed authentications with rotating usernames against loginwindow or remote management service using reused breached credentials

Technique names and descriptions © MITRE ATT&CK®, CC BY 4.0. Not endorsed by MITRE.