Attack Ent T1110 001 Password Guessing

MITRE ATT&CK T1110.001: Password Guessing

When to use this skill

Use this skill when the task involves T1110.001, Password Guessing, enterprise ATT&CK, TTP mapping, detection engineering, hunting, incident-response enrichment, control validation, or authorized adversary-emulation planning. Treat it as a defensive analysis aid: keep outputs focused on understanding, detecting, mitigating, and safely validating this ATT&CK sub-technique.

Technique context

• ATT&CK domain: enterprise
• ATT&CK ID: T1110.001
• Technique name: Password Guessing
• Type: sub-technique
• ATT&CK URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1110/001
• Tactics: credential-access
• Platforms: Containers, ESXi, IaaS, Identity Provider, Linux, macOS, Network Devices, Office Suite, SaaS, Windows
• Required permissions: Not specified
• Effective permissions: Not specified
• Defenses bypassed: Not specified

ATT&CK description

Adversaries with no prior knowledge of legitimate credentials within the system or environment may guess passwords to attempt access to accounts. Without knowledge of the password for an account, an adversary may opt to systematically guess the password using a repetitive or iterative mechanism. An adversary may guess login credentials without prior knowledge of system or environment passwords during an operation by using a list of common passwords. Password guessing may or may not take into account the target's policies on password complexity or use policies that may lock accounts out after a number of failed attempts.

Guessing passwords can be a risky option because it could cause numerous authentication failures and account lockouts, depending on the organization's login failure policies. (Citation: Cylance Cleaver)

Typically, management services over commonly used ports are used when guessing passwords. 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)
• SNMP (161/UDP and 162/TCP/UDP)

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). Further, adversaries may abuse network device interfaces (such as wlanAPI) to brute force accessible wifi-router(s) via wireless authentication protocols.(Citation: Trend Micro Emotet 2020)

In default environments, LDAP and Kerberos connection attempts are less likely to trigger events over SMB, which creates Windows "logon failure" event ID 4625.

Agent workflow

1. Clarify scope: identify the system, asset class, log sources, cloud or endpoint platform, and whether the user wants triage, detection, coverage assessment, or safe emulation planning.
2. Load bundled resources as needed: use references/technique-profile.json for structured metadata, references/detection-and-mitigation.md for triage and telemetry guidance, references/known-threat-context.md for ATT&CK relationship context, and templates/ for repeatable outputs.
3. Map observations to ATT&CK: compare the user's evidence to the ATT&CK description, tactics, platforms, and known procedure patterns before asserting a match.
4. Produce defensive outputs: prioritize hypotheses, telemetry requirements, detection logic ideas, validation steps, containment guidance, and mitigations.
5. Preserve uncertainty: distinguish confirmed evidence, plausible indicators, assumptions, and gaps. Recommend what to collect next.
6. Stay safe: do not provide malware, credential theft, persistence, evasion, destructive automation, or unauthorized exploitation instructions. For adversary emulation, keep steps bounded to approved lab or control-validation contexts and omit operational abuse details.

Bundled resources

• references/technique-profile.json: machine-readable ATT&CK metadata for this technique.
• references/detection-and-mitigation.md: detection notes, telemetry checklist, triage questions, mitigation candidates, and false-positive considerations.
• references/known-threat-context.md: ATT&CK relationship context with attribution cautions.
• templates/detection-brief.md: detection engineering brief template.
• templates/hunt-plan.md: threat hunt plan template.
• templates/incident-response-note.md: incident response note template.
• templates/coverage-assessment.md: ATT&CK coverage assessment template.
• scripts/render_brief.py: local helper that renders a Markdown defensive brief from technique-profile.json.
• assets/output-schema.json: JSON schema for structured technique analysis outputs.

To generate a quick brief, run python scripts/render_brief.py --output brief.md from inside this skill directory, or adapt the templates directly.

Detection guidance

No ATT&CK detection guidance was present in the source STIX object.

Useful telemetry and data sources

• Not specified in the STIX object.

Mitigations to consider

• Account Use Policies
• Multi-factor Authentication
• Password Policies
• Update Software

Known threat context

Use these examples only as contextual leads, not as proof that an observed event is this technique:

• APT28 (intrusion-set)
• APT29 (intrusion-set)
• China Chopper (malware)
• CrackMapExec (tool)
• Emotet (malware)
• HermeticWizard (malware)
• Lucifer (malware)
• P.A.S. Webshell (malware)
• Pony (malware)
• SpeakUp (malware)
• VOID MANTICORE (intrusion-set)
• Xbash (malware)

Recommended output pattern

When responding with this skill, structure the answer as:

• Assessment: whether the evidence supports this ATT&CK mapping and why.
• Evidence: specific indicators, logs, behaviors, and assumptions.
• Detection: telemetry sources, analytic logic, and tuning considerations.
• Response: containment, eradication, recovery, and validation actions.
• Coverage gaps: missing logs, sensors, controls, or environmental details.
• References: include the ATT&CK URL and any user-provided evidence references.

ATT&CK contributors

• Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC)
• Mohamed Kmal