AN1276: Analytic 1276
Multiple authentication failures for valid or invalid users followed by success from same IP/user
Analyst context for executives and security teams
This analytic is about spotting repeated login failures followed by a successful login from the same IP address and user context on Linux systems. For leaders, the value is not just “failed logins happened”; it is evidence that an account may have been guessed, mistyped repeatedly, or accessed after credential probing. That makes it relevant to identity assurance, SOC triage quality, and incident response decisions around account containment.
Executive priority
Prioritize this as an identity and access monitoring control for Linux environments. It can support business continuity by helping teams identify potentially compromised accounts before broader access is established. Executives should ask whether Linux authentication logs are centrally collected, whether SOC playbooks distinguish benign user error from suspicious authentication patterns, and whether successful logins after repeated failures trigger timely review and account-level response.
Technical view
Validate whether the SOC can correlate multiple authentication failures for valid or invalid users followed by a success from the same IP/user on Linux. Because no official detection logic is provided, teams should define local thresholds, time windows, and normalization requirements. The analytic’s usefulness depends on reliable parsing of Linux authentication events, consistent user and source IP fields, and the ability to join failure and success outcomes in sequence.
Likely telemetry
- Linux authentication logs showing failed and successful login events
- Usernames associated with authentication attempts, including valid and invalid users where logged
- Source IP address for each authentication attempt
- Timestamps sufficient to order failures before success
- Centralized log collection or SIEM-normalized authentication event data
Detection direction
- Confirm Linux authentication success and failure events are collected from relevant hosts and normalized consistently.
- Tune thresholds and time windows to separate common password mistakes from suspicious repeated failures followed by success.
- Review false positives from administrators, service accounts, automation, shared jump hosts, VPN egress, or user lockout recovery workflows.
- Ensure the correlation preserves sequence: multiple failures must precede the successful authentication from the same IP/user context.
- Add triage context where available, such as asset criticality, account privilege, recent account changes, and whether the source IP is expected for that user.
Mitigation priorities
- Ensure centralized collection and retention of Linux authentication logs before relying on this analytic operationally.
- Define response playbooks for accounts that show repeated failures followed by success, including validation with the user or system owner.
- Apply account protection controls appropriate to the environment, such as strong authentication policy, lockout/rate-limiting where feasible, and privileged account review.
- Use findings to improve identity hygiene, including removal of stale accounts and review of exposed remote access paths.
- Document detection logic, thresholds, and response evidence for compliance and audit readiness.
Analyst notes and limits
The supplied ATT&CK object is a detection analytic for Linux with the description: multiple authentication failures for valid or invalid users followed by success from the same IP/user. No tactics, relationships, or official detection implementation were supplied, so local engineering decisions are required for thresholds, fields, and workflow integration.
This take is limited to the official STIX fields and external reference provided. It does not establish active exploitation, actor behavior, impact, or guaranteed detection coverage. No relationship context or official detection logic was supplied, so environment-specific validation is required.
Analytic 1276
Multiple authentication failures for valid or invalid users followed by success from same IP/user
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
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Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Current bundle | 923ad3391a6f… |
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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[1]
mitre-attack AN1276Open source URL
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