Password Spraying
Parent: T1110
Description
Adversaries may use a single or small list of commonly used passwords against many different accounts to attempt to acquire valid account credentials. Password spraying uses one password (e.g. 'Password01'), or a small list of commonly used passwords, that may match the complexity policy of the domain. Logins are attempted with that password against many different accounts on a network to avoid account lockouts that would normally occur when brute forcing a single account with many passwords. (Citation: BlackHillsInfosec Password Spraying) Typically, management services over commonly used ports are used when password spraying. 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.(Citation: US-CERT TA18-068A 2018) In order to avoid detection thresholds, adversaries may deliberately throttle password spraying attempts to avoid triggering security alerting. Additionally, adversaries may leverage LDAP and Kerberos authentication attempts, which are less likely to trigger high-visibility events such as Windows "logon failure" event ID 4625 that is commonly triggered by failed SMB connection attempts.(Citation: Microsoft Storm-0940)
Mapped SPARTA techniques
No techniques mapped to this control.
Cross-framework references
Relationships published by the source frameworks themselves, reproduced here with attribution. They are not SafeMode Space mappings and carry no confidence rating of ours.
Countered by 27 in MITRE D3FEND (Defensive Techniques)
- D3-AEMApplication Exception Monitoring
- D3-ANAAAdministrative Network Activity Analysis
- D3-ANCIAuthentication Cache Invalidation
- D3-APCAApplication Protocol Command Analysis
- D3-CAAConnection Attempt Analysis
- D3-CCSACredential Compromise Scope Analysis
- D3-CDPChange Default Password
- D3-CHCredential Hardening
- D3-CRCredential Revocation
- D3-CROCredential Rotation
- D3-CSPPClient-server Payload Profiling
- D3-CTSCredential Transmission Scoping
- D3-DUCDecoy User Credential
- D3-MFAMulti-factor Authentication
- D3-NTCDNetwork Traffic Community Deviation
- D3-NTFNetwork Traffic Filtering
- D3-NTSANetwork Traffic Signature Analysis
- D3-OPMOperational Process Monitoring
- D3-OTPOne-time Password
- D3-PHDURAPer Host Download-Upload Ratio Analysis
- D3-PMADProtocol Metadata Anomaly Detection
- D3-PRPassword Rotation
- D3-PWAPassword Authentication
- D3-RICReissue Credential
- D3-RTSDRemote Terminal Session Detection
- D3-SPPStrong Password Policy
- D3-UGLPAUser Geolocation Logon Pattern Analysis
Cite as SafeMode Space, mitre-attack-enterprise T1110.003.