AN1523: Analytic 1523
Series of failed logins from loginwindow or sshd with repeated usernames or password prompts
Analyst context for executives and security teams
This analytic is about repeated failed macOS login attempts observed from loginwindow or sshd, especially when the same usernames or repeated password prompts appear. For leaders, the value is not in the analytic name but in confirming whether macOS authentication failures are visible enough for the SOC to spot account-guessing, misconfiguration, or suspicious access attempts before they become an incident decision problem.
Executive priority
Prioritize this as an identity and endpoint visibility check for macOS environments. Security leaders should ask whether failed interactive and SSH login activity is collected, retained, reviewed, and usable as evidence during investigations or audits. Because ATT&CK provides no detection logic, tactic, or relationship context for this object, it should be treated as a validation prompt rather than a complete detection strategy.
Technical view
SOC and detection teams should validate telemetry for failed authentication events originating from macOS loginwindow and sshd. Useful analysis should focus on repeated usernames, repeated password prompts, and series-based patterns over time. Since no official detection logic is supplied, teams must define local thresholds, baselines, suppression rules, and triage criteria appropriate to their macOS fleet and remote access patterns.
Likely telemetry
- macOS authentication logs showing failed login attempts
- Events or log records associated with loginwindow
- Events or log records associated with sshd
- Username values tied to failed authentication attempts
- Timestamps and source context sufficient to identify repeated attempts or prompting patterns
Detection direction
- Confirm that macOS failed-login events from both loginwindow and sshd are actually collected and searchable.
- Build or validate correlation that identifies repeated failed attempts involving the same username or repeated password prompts.
- Tune thresholds against normal user error, shared workstations, administrative activity, and legitimate SSH access patterns to reduce false positives.
- Check retention and field normalization so incident responders can reconstruct when failures occurred and which accounts were involved.
- Because no ATT&CK relationship context is supplied, do not assume a specific adversary tactic or campaign; use this analytic as local behavioral coverage for suspicious authentication failure patterns.
Mitigation priorities
- Ensure macOS authentication logging is enabled, centralized where appropriate, and retained for investigation needs.
- Review access paths that use sshd and confirm they align with business requirements.
- Use identity and access controls appropriate to the environment, such as strong authentication policy, account lockout or rate-limiting where operationally safe, and timely review of repeated failures.
- Document detection assumptions and response playbooks so SOC and IR teams know when repeated failures should trigger investigation or escalation.
Analyst notes and limits
The supplied ATT&CK object is a detection analytic for macOS with a concise description only: series of failed logins from loginwindow or sshd with repeated usernames or password prompts. There are no supplied tactics, relationships, aliases, labels, or official detection details. The main defensive value is to test whether macOS authentication failure visibility and correlation are operationally ready.
This take is limited to the official STIX fields, external reference, and the absence of relationship context. It does not establish active exploitation, attribution, impact, coverage, or a complete detection rule. Local log sources, authentication architecture, thresholds, and business context are required to operationalize it.
Analytic 1523
Series of failed logins from loginwindow or sshd with repeated usernames or password prompts
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 | 39710b318147… |
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 AN1523Open source URL
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