T1078.003: Local Accounts
Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of a local account as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Local accounts are those configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration on a single system or service.
Local Accounts may also be abused to elevate privileges and harvest credentials through OS Credential Dumping. Password reuse may allow the abuse of local accounts across a set of machines on a network for the purposes of Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement.
Analyst context for executives and security teams
Local account abuse matters because it turns ordinary endpoint, server, appliance, container, or ESXi credentials into a path for access, persistence, privilege escalation, and stealth. The business issue is not only whether passwords are strong; it is whether the organization can prove which local accounts exist, where credentials are reused, who has administrative rights, and whether unusual use would be visible during an incident.
Executive priority
Treat this as an identity and resilience control gap, especially for systems that are hard to centrally govern such as network devices, ESXi hosts, containers, Linux/macOS/Windows systems, and service or support accounts. Leaders should ask for evidence of local account inventory, privileged account governance, password reuse prevention, MFA applicability for critical access paths, and log coverage. The ATT&CK relationships to multiple campaigns, groups, and tools make this a broadly relevant behavior, but local exposure must be validated from the organization’s own account and telemetry data.
Technical view
For SOC, detection engineering, and IR teams, validate coverage for local account use across the listed platforms: Containers, ESXi, Linux, macOS, Network Devices, and Windows. ATT&CK provides no official detection text for T1078.003, but it does relate the technique to DET0407, Detection of Local Account Abuse for Initial Access and Persistence. Prioritize detections that distinguish expected local administration, service activity, and support workflows from anomalous local logons, newly created or modified local accounts, privilege changes, and reuse of the same local credentials across multiple systems. During IR, local accounts should be reviewed alongside OS Credential Dumping risk and password reuse because the description notes these can enable privilege escalation and broader movement.
Likely telemetry
- Local account inventory and configuration state across endpoints, servers, ESXi, containers, and network devices
- Authentication and logon records for local accounts, including source, destination, time, and access method where available
- Local user creation, deletion, enablement, disablement, password change, and group membership change events
- Privileged account use and administrative command/session audit logs
- Service account and remote support account usage records
Detection direction
- Confirm whether local account activity is centrally collected for every supported platform in scope; many blind spots occur on appliances, ESXi, containers, and non-Windows systems.
- Baseline legitimate local administration and support patterns before alerting aggressively, because local accounts may be validly used for administration, services, and remote support.
- Tune for unusual first-seen use, dormant account use, local administrator group changes, account creation followed by interactive or remote access, and repeated use of similarly named or shared local accounts across systems.
- Correlate local account use with privilege escalation and credential dumping investigations, since the ATT&CK description links local accounts to OS Credential Dumping and password reuse risk.
- Use the related DET0407 strategy as a reference point where available, but do not assume detection coverage because the supplied ATT&CK object provides no official detection details.
Mitigation priorities
- Start with User Account Management: maintain an authoritative inventory of local accounts, owners, purpose, and lifecycle status; remove or disable unnecessary accounts.
- Apply Privileged Account Management: restrict local administrative rights, enforce least privilege, monitor privileged use, and ensure accountability through logging and auditing.
- Enforce Password Policies that reduce weak or reused local credentials, with particular attention to shared administrative or support accounts.
- Use Multi-factor Authentication where supported for critical systems and services, recognizing that applicability may vary by platform and access method.
- Prioritize platforms that can materially affect operations or recovery, including ESXi, network devices, servers, and container infrastructure.
Analyst notes and limits
This sub-technique sits under Valid Accounts and is associated with initial access, persistence, privilege escalation, and stealth. Relationship context includes campaigns, groups, and software that use this behavior, including Operation Wocao, SolarWinds Compromise, Turla, APT29, FIN7, Play, Cobalt Strike, and Umbreon. Those relationships support prioritization, but they should not be read as evidence that any specific organization is currently targeted or compromised.
The supplied ATT&CK object has no official detection narrative, and the related detection strategy details are not provided. Platform-specific event IDs, commands, log locations, and vendor controls are intentionally not asserted here. Effective assessment requires local evidence: account inventory, administrative workflows, password reuse posture, MFA support, and telemetry collection quality.
Local Accounts
Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of a local account as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Local accounts are those configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration on a single system or service.
Local Accounts may also be abused to elevate privileges and harvest credentials through OS Credential Dumping. Password reuse may allow the abuse of local accounts across a set of machines on a network for the purposes of Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement.
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.
Related techniques
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 | T1078 | Valid Accounts | This object subtechnique of Valid Accounts. |
Groups, software, and campaigns
G0094: Kimsuky
Kimsuky is a Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-based cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2012. The group initially targeted South Korean government agencies, think tanks, and subject-matter experts in various fields. Its operations expanded to include the United Nations and organizations in the government, education, business services, and manufacturing sectors across the United States, Japan, Russia, and Europe. Kimsuky has focused collection on foreign policy and national security issues tied to the Korean Peninsula, nuclear policy, and sanctions. Kimsuky operations have overlapped with those of other North Korean state-sponsored cyber espionage actors as a result of ad hoc collaborations or other limited resource sharing.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Kimsuky was assessed to be responsible for the 2014 Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise; other notable campaigns include Operation STOLEN PENCIL (2018), Operation Kabar Cobra (2019), and Operation Smoke Screen (2019).[7][8][9] In 2023, Kimsuky was observed using commercial large language models (LLMs) to assist with vulnerability research, scripting, social engineering and reconnaissance.[10]
DPRK threat actor cluster boundaries overlap in open source reporting, with some security researchers consolidating all attributed North Korean state-sponsored cyber activity under Lazarus Group, rather than tracking operationally distinct subgroups.
G0056: PROMETHIUM
PROMETHIUM is an activity group focused on espionage that has been active since at least 2012. The group has conducted operations globally with a heavy emphasis on Turkish targets. PROMETHIUM has demonstrated similarity to another activity group called NEODYMIUM due to overlapping victim and campaign characteristics.[1][2][3]
G0051: FIN10
G1040: Play
Play is a ransomware group that has been active since at least 2022 deploying Playcrypt ransomware against the business, government, critical infrastructure, healthcare, and media sectors in North America, South America, and Europe. Play actors employ a double-extortion model, encrypting systems after exfiltrating data, and are presumed by security researchers to operate as a closed group.[1][2]
G0050: APT32
APT32 is a suspected Vietnam-based threat group that has been active since at least 2014. The group has targeted multiple private sector industries as well as foreign governments, dissidents, and journalists with a strong focus on Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos, and Cambodia. They have extensively used strategic web compromises to compromise victims.[1][2][3]
G1041: Sea Turtle
Sea Turtle is a Türkiye-linked threat actor active since at least 2017 performing espionage and service provider compromise operations against victims in Asia, Europe, and North America. Sea Turtle is notable for targeting registrars managing ccTLDs and complex DNS-based intrusions where the threat actor compromised DNS providers to hijack DNS resolution for ultimate victims, enabling Sea Turtle to spoof log in portals and other applications for credential collection.[1][2][3][4]
G0081: Tropic Trooper
Tropic Trooper is an unaffiliated threat group that has led targeted campaigns against targets in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. Tropic Trooper focuses on targeting government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries and has been active since 2011.[1][2][3]
G0125: HAFNIUM
HAFNIUM is a likely state-sponsored cyber espionage group operating out of China that has been active since at least January 2021. HAFNIUM primarily targets entities in the US across a number of industry sectors, including infectious disease researchers, law firms, higher education institutions, defense contractors, policy think tanks, and NGOs. HAFNIUM has targeted remote management tools and cloud software for intial access and has demonstrated an ability to quickly operationalize exploits for identified vulnerabilities in edge devices.[1][2][3]
G0046: FIN7
FIN7 is a financially-motivated threat group that has been active since 2013. FIN7 has targeted the retail, restaurant, hospitality, software, consulting, financial services, medical equipment, cloud services, media, food and beverage, transportation, pharmaceutical, and utilities industries in the United States. A portion of FIN7 was operated out of a front company called Combi Security and often used point-of-sale malware for targeting efforts. Since 2020, FIN7 shifted operations to big game hunting (BGH), including use of REvil ransomware and their own Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), Darkside. FIN7 may be linked to the Carbanak Group, but multiple threat groups have been observed using Carbanak, leading these groups to be tracked separately.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
G1047: Velvet Ant
Velvet Ant is a threat actor operating since at least 2021. Velvet Ant is associated with complex persistence mechanisms, the targeting of network devices and appliances during operations, and the use of zero day exploits.[1][2]
G0016: APT29
APT29 is threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).[1][2] They have operated since at least 2008, often targeting government networks in Europe and NATO member countries, research institutes, and think tanks. APT29 reportedly compromised the Democratic National Committee starting in the summer of 2015.[3][4][5][6]
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to the SVR; public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[7][8] Industry reporting also referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, StellarParticle, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[9][10][11][12][13][14]
G0010: Turla
Turla is a cyber espionage threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). They have compromised victims in over 50 countries since at least 2004, spanning a range of industries including government, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies. Turla is known for conducting watering hole and spearphishing campaigns, and leveraging in-house tools and malware, such as Uroburos.[1][2][3][4][5]
S0367: Emotet
S0154: Cobalt Strike
Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.[1]
In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz.[1]
S0368: NotPetya
NotPetya is malware that was used by Sandworm Team in a worldwide attack starting on June 27, 2017. While NotPetya appears as a form of ransomware, its main purpose was to destroy data and disk structures on compromised systems; the attackers never intended to make the encrypted data recoverable. As such, NotPetya may be more appropriately thought of as a form of wiper malware. NotPetya contains worm-like features to spread itself across a computer network using the SMBv1 exploits EternalBlue and EternalRomance.[1][2][3][4]
S1202: LockBit 3.0
LockBit 3.0 is an evolution of the LockBit Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) offering with similarities to BlackMatter and BlackCat ransomware. LockBit 3.0 has been in use since at least June 2022 and features enhanced defense evasion and exfiltration tactics, robust encryption methods for Windows and VMware ESXi systems, and a more refined RaaS structure over its predecessors such as LockBit 2.0.[1][2][3][4]
S0221: Umbreon
A Linux rootkit that provides backdoor access and hides from defenders.
C0062: Anthropic AI-orchestrated Campaign
The Anthropic AI-orchestrated Campaign was conducted in September 2025 by a likely China nexus espionage actor identified as GTG-1002. The Anthropic AI-orchestrated Campaign was a highly coordinated operation that manipulated Claude Code to perform reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, exploitation, lateral movement, credential harvesting, data analysis, and exfiltration operations at approximately 30 entities in the technology, financial, chemical, and government sectors. During the Anthropic AI-orchestrated Campaign, human operators used Claude Code agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools to automate cyber operations. Operators broke attacks into discrete tasks, used crafted prompts, and established personas to bypass AI guardrails, enabling the agents to execute the operations with minimal human involvement.[1][2]
C0024: SolarWinds Compromise
The SolarWinds Compromise was a sophisticated supply chain cyber operation conducted by APT29 that was discovered in mid-December 2020. APT29 used customized malware to inject malicious code into the SolarWinds Orion software build process that was later distributed through a normal software update; they also used password spraying, token theft, API abuse, spear phishing, and other supply chain attacks to compromise user accounts and leverage their associated access. Victims of this campaign included government, consulting, technology, telecom, and other organizations in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This activity has been labled the StellarParticle campaign in industry reporting.[1] Industry reporting also initially referred to the actors involved in this campaign as UNC2452, NOBELIUM, Dark Halo, and SolarStorm.[2][3][4][5][1][6][7][8]
In April 2021, the US and UK governments attributed the SolarWinds Compromise to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); public statements included citations to APT29, Cozy Bear, and The Dukes.[9][10][11] The US government assessed that of the approximately 18,000 affected public and private sector customers of Solar Winds’ Orion product, a much smaller number were compromised by follow-on APT29 activity on their systems.[12]
C0049: Leviathan Australian Intrusions
Leviathan Australian Intrusions consisted of at least two long-term intrusions against victims in Australia by Leviathan, relying on similar tradecraft such as external service exploitation followed by extensive credential capture and re-use to enable privilege escalation and lateral movement. Leviathan Australian Intrusions were focused on exfiltrating sensitive data including valid credentials for the victim organizations.[1]
C0014: Operation Wocao
Operation Wocao was a cyber espionage campaign that targeted organizations around the world, including in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The suspected China-based actors compromised government organizations and managed service providers, as well as aviation, construction, energy, finance, health care, insurance, offshore engineering, software development, and transportation companies.[1]
Security researchers assessed the Operation Wocao actors used similar TTPs and tools as APT20, suggesting a possible overlap. Operation Wocao was named after an observed command line entry by one of the threat actors, possibly out of frustration from losing webshell access.[1]
All related ATT&CK context
Mitigation direction
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 | 2.0 | Current bundle | 77fe58e09e44… |
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 T1078.003Open source URL
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