T1087

Account Discovery

ESXi · IaaS · Identity Provider · Linux · macOS · Office Suite · SaaS · Windows1 piece on this siteT1087 on attack.mitre.org

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).

MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

Practise it

1

Labs, timelines, evidence packs and tabletop scenarios to work before you need to.

how MITRE says to see it

Enumeration of User or Account Information Across Platforms

  • Detection of processes performing local or domain account enumeration by invoking account directory queries or security APIs followed by structured output of account lists.
  • Enumeration of users and groups through suspicious shell commands or unauthorized access to /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow.
  • Detection of account enumeration through directory service queries or system utilities accessing account metadata stores, followed by structured enumeration output.
  • Detection of enumeration of identity entities through cloud provider APIs where principals retrieve account metadata such as IAM users or roles in rapid succession.

what reduces it

  • 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 `HKLM\ SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\CredUI\EnumerateAdministrators`.
  • M1018 User Account Management. Manage the creation, modification, use, and permissions associated to user accounts.

sub-techniques

The description, detection analytics and mitigations are reproduced from MITRE ATT&CK, version 19.2, under its terms of use. The checklists, hunts, labs and everything else linked here are this site’s.