DET0487: Distributed Password Spraying via Authentication Failures Across Multiple Accounts
DET0487 is a detection strategy for spotting password spraying by looking for authentication failures spread across many accounts. Its business value is id...
Analyst context for executives and security teams
DET0487 is a detection strategy for spotting password spraying by looking for authentication failures spread across many accounts. Its business value is identity risk reduction: a single weak or reused password can become an entry point without triggering traditional single-account brute-force lockouts. Because the related ATT&CK technique applies to Identity Provider, IaaS, Containers, and ESXi environments, leaders should treat this as a cross-platform authentication monitoring problem, not only a domain-login alert.
Executive priority
Prioritize this where identity systems protect cloud, virtualization, container, or administrative access. The key decision is whether the organization can prove it sees failed authentication patterns across many accounts and across relevant identity planes quickly enough for SOC or IR action. This supports operational resilience, incident triage, and compliance evidence around access monitoring, especially when cloud and infrastructure authentication logs are managed by different teams.
Technical view
The supplied object has no official detection text or platform list, but its name and relationship to T1110.003 indicate a strategy centered on correlated authentication failures across multiple accounts. SOC and detection engineering teams should validate whether they can group failed logons by time window, source indicators, target account count, authentication service, and environment. Because the related technique is Credential Access and spans Identity Provider, IaaS, Containers, and ESXi, teams should check whether those authentication sources are normalized into a common view or whether detections are isolated per platform.
Likely telemetry
- Authentication failure events with timestamp, account identifier, source address or source context, and target service
- Identity Provider sign-in logs where applicable
- IaaS authentication and control-plane login logs where applicable
- Container platform authentication logs where applicable
- ESXi or virtualization authentication logs where applicable
Detection direction
- Correlate failed authentication attempts across many distinct accounts, not only repeated failures against one account.
- Validate coverage across the related environments: Identity Provider, IaaS, Containers, and ESXi, if present in the local architecture.
- Tune thresholds by normal business authentication patterns to reduce noise from misconfigured services, expired credentials, or legitimate bulk access changes.
- Look for blind spots caused by siloed cloud, identity, virtualization, or container logs; inconsistent account naming; short retention; or missing source context.
- Use relationship context to map the detection to ATT&CK T1110.003 Password Spraying under Credential Access for reporting and control validation.
Mitigation priorities
- First, centralize and normalize authentication failure telemetry from the identity and infrastructure platforms in scope.
- Next, review authentication policy controls such as throttling, lockout behavior, and monitoring of repeated failures across many accounts.
- Then, define SOC triage steps for suspected password spraying, including account review and follow-up on any successful authentication after clustered failures.
- Finally, use findings to inform identity governance, access review, and compliance evidence for authentication monitoring coverage.
Analyst notes and limits
This take is based on the detection strategy name, ATT&CK metadata, and its relationship to T1110.003 Password Spraying. The most important local validation question is whether failures can be correlated across accounts and platforms quickly enough to support response.
The ATT&CK object provides no official description, no official detection text, and no direct platforms or tactics for the detection strategy itself. Platform and tactic context comes only from the related Password Spraying technique. Local thresholds, data availability, and response actions must be determined from the organization’s own authentication architecture and log quality.
Distributed Password Spraying via Authentication Failures Across Multiple Accounts
No official description is available in the imported ATT&CK source object.
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.
Techniques used
This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.
| Domain | ID | Name | Relationship / procedure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | T1110.003 | Password Spraying Sub-technique | This object detects Password Spraying. |
All related ATT&CK context
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 | 3d807b86461d… |
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 DET0487Open source URL
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