AN0451: Analytic 0451
Detect repeated failed login events followed by MFA challenges triggered in rapid succession, especially if originating from service accounts or anomalous IP addresses.
Analyst context for executives and security teams
This analytic is about spotting a potentially high-risk authentication pattern: repeated failed Windows login events followed quickly by MFA challenges, particularly from service accounts or unusual IP addresses. For leaders, the value is not just detecting bad passwords; it is validating whether identity monitoring can distinguish normal user mistakes from activity that may indicate account abuse, password spraying, MFA fatigue, or compromised automation paths.
Executive priority
Prioritize this as an identity resilience and incident-readiness question: can the organization prove it sees failed authentication bursts, related MFA prompts, account type context, and source IP anomalies quickly enough to investigate? The business risk is that weak visibility around authentication and MFA events can delay containment decisions, complicate audit evidence, and leave service accounts or privileged workflows under-monitored.
Technical view
SOC and detection teams should validate whether Windows authentication failures can be correlated with MFA challenge telemetry in a short time window. Tune around account type, especially service accounts, and source context such as new, unusual, or unexpected IP addresses. Because ATT&CK provides no standalone detection logic or relationship context for this analytic, implementation should be based on local identity architecture, MFA provider logs, normal login baselines, and service account behavior.
Likely telemetry
- Windows failed login events
- MFA challenge and prompt logs
- Account metadata, including service account identification
- Source IP address and geolocation or network reputation context
- Authentication timestamps suitable for rapid-succession correlation
Detection direction
- Correlate repeated failed logins followed by MFA challenges within a short, locally defined time window.
- Prioritize alerts where the account is a service account or the source IP is anomalous for that account.
- Baseline normal failed-login rates to reduce noise from user error, expired passwords, scheduled jobs, and misconfigured services.
- Validate that MFA telemetry and Windows authentication telemetry share consistent account identifiers and timestamps.
- Review blind spots where MFA logs are not centralized, service accounts are poorly classified, or source IP context is missing.
Mitigation priorities
- Inventory and classify service accounts so detections can apply higher scrutiny to sensitive or non-interactive identities.
- Ensure Windows authentication logs and MFA challenge logs are centrally retained and searchable for investigation and compliance evidence.
- Define expected login sources for service accounts and privileged identities where practical.
- Review MFA policies and incident response playbooks for repeated prompt scenarios and suspicious failed-login bursts.
- Use findings from tuning to prioritize identity hygiene, account ownership cleanup, and monitoring coverage gaps.
Analyst notes and limits
The supplied ATT&CK object is a detection analytic for Windows environments. It describes the behavior to detect but does not provide a formal detection query, tactics, relationships, mitigations, or threat actor context. The most important local validation is whether failed login events and MFA challenge events can be reliably correlated across identity systems.
No active exploitation, attribution, impact, or guaranteed detection coverage is stated in the supplied fields. Tactics are not specified, and no relationship context is provided. Any production analytic requires local thresholds, account baselines, MFA provider details, and environment-specific false-positive review.
Analytic 0451
Detect repeated failed login events followed by MFA challenges triggered in rapid succession, especially if originating from service accounts or anomalous IP addresses.
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
All related ATT&CK context
No relationships are available in the current normalized data for this object.
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Current bundle | b299c0fd6aaa… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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mitre-attack AN0451Open source URL
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