Live Active security incident? Get immediate response
MITRE ATT&CK® Technique

T1147: Hidden Users

Every user account in macOS has a userID associated with it. When creating a user, you can specify the userID for that account. There is a property value in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow called Hide500Users that prevents users with userIDs 500 and lower from appearing at the login screen. By using the Create Account technique with a userID under 500 and enabling this property (setting it to Yes), an adversary can hide their user accounts much more easily: sudo dscl . -create /Users/username UniqueID 401 [1].

EnterpriseT1147TechniqueObject v1.1 Modified
Historical object

This ATT&CK object is revoked or deprecated in the current MITRE ATT&CK release.

It remains available for historical context and inbound links. Use current ATT&CK relationships and replacement guidance before basing detection or reporting work on this page.

Glexia's Take

Analyst summary pending validation

Glexia publishes ATT&CK takes only after source-hash and schema validation. Until then, use the official MITRE definition below and the defensive relationship context on this page.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Hidden Users

Every user account in macOS has a userID associated with it. When creating a user, you can specify the userID for that account. There is a property value in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow called Hide500Users that prevents users with userIDs 500 and lower from appearing at the login screen. By using the Create Account technique with a userID under 500 and enabling this property (setting it to Yes), an adversary can hide their user accounts much more easily: sudo dscl . -create /Users/username UniqueID 401 [1].

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

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.

ATT&CK relationship table

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.

1 rows
Domain ID Name Relationship / procedure
Enterprise T1564.002 Hidden Users Sub-technique This object revoked by Hidden Users.
Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

Change history

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 .

ATT&CK release
19.1
Object version
1.1
Created
Modified
Raw hash
0029750b4be06896...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
Release Bundle imported Object version Modified Status Raw hash
19.1 1.1 Current bundle Revoked 0029750b4be0…
Raw source

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.

Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    Cybereason OSX Pirrit

    Amit Serper. (2016). Cybereason Lab Analysis OSX.Pirrit. Retrieved December 10, 2021.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    mitre-attack T1147
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

Source: MITRE ATT&CK®. © 2026 The MITRE Corporation. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation. Glexia is not affiliated with or endorsed by MITRE.