ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Unsecured Credentials T1552

Adversaries may search compromised systems to find and obtain insecurely stored credentials. These credentials can be stored and/or misplaced in many locations on a system, including plaintext files (e.g. Shell History), operating system or application-specific repositories (e.g. Credentials in Registry), or other specialized files/artifacts (e.g. Private Keys).

Events covered

4 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Security-Auditing4662An operation was performed on an object.
Security-Auditing4663An attempt was made to access an object.
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 4 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.

Fields filtered most (8 distinct)

The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.

FieldRulesHowSample values
Image2ends_with 2\wmic.exe, \wevtutil.exe, gitleaks.exe, trufflehog.exe
CommandLine2match 2.ID -eq 25, .eventid -eq 4778, .ID -eq 1149, gitleaks, trufflehog
Properties1match 1b7ff5a38-0818-42b0-8110-d3d154c97f24, 612cb747-c0e8-4f92-9221-fdd5f15b550d, b8dfa744-31dc-4ef1-ac7c-84baf7ef9da7
OriginalFileName1eq 1wmic.exe, wevtutil.exe
ParentImage1ends_with 1\node.exe, \bun.exe
TargetFilename1in 1"*\\Windows Messaging..., "*\\Profiles\\Outlook\\9375CFF0413111d3B88A00104B2A6676*"
process_name1ne 1*\\outlook.exe
EventID1eq 14663

Top indicator values (69 distinct)

Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
Propertiesmatch612cb747-c0e8-4f92-9221-fdd5f15b550d1
Propertiesmatchb7ff5a38-0818-42b0-8110-d3d154c97f241
Propertiesmatchb3f93023-9239-4f7c-b99c-6745d87adbc21
Propertiesmatchb8dfa744-31dc-4ef1-ac7c-84baf7ef9da71
CommandLinematchWin32_NTLogEvent1
OriginalFileNameeqwevtutil.exe14
CommandLinematchEventCode=?4778?1
CommandLinematch.eventid -eq 11491
CommandLinematchMicrosoft-Windows-Security-Auditing1
CommandLinematch-InstanceId 11491
CommandLinematchMicrosoft-Windows-TerminalServices-RemoteConnectionManager1
Imageends_with\wevtutil.exe16
CommandLinematch.eventid -eq 251
CommandLinematchEventCode=?25?1
CommandLinematchSystem[EventID=462?]1
CommandLinematch.ID -eq 47781
CommandLinematch-InstanceId 211
CommandLinematch.ID -eq 11491
CommandLinematch.eventid -eq 221
CommandLinematchMicrosoft-Windows-PowerShell1

Common exclusions (3 distinct)

Field/operator/value combinations that rules under this technique routinely exclude (top-level not() clauses). These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
AccessMaskin0x01
SubjectUserSideqS-1-5-181
AccessMaskin0x1001

Rules under this technique

Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.

Sigma 2 rules

Elastic 1 rule

Splunk 1 rule