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MITRE ATT&CK® Technique

T1555: Credentials from Password Stores

Adversaries may search for common password storage locations to obtain user credentials.[1] Passwords are stored in several places on a system, depending on the operating system or application holding the credentials. There are also specific applications and services that store passwords to make them easier for users to manage and maintain, such as password managers and cloud secrets vaults. Once credentials are obtained, they can be used to perform lateral movement and access restricted information.

EnterpriseT1555TechniqueObject v1.2 Modified
Glexia's Take

Analyst context for executives and security teams

Analyst confidence Medium

Credentials from Password Stores matters because stored passwords, browser credentials, password-manager contents, OS keychains, Windows Credential Manager entries, and cloud secrets can turn one compromised user or host into broader access. For leaders, this is an identity-risk and resilience issue: if credential stores are reachable without strong privilege boundaries, monitoring, and rotation discipline, an incident can quickly become lateral movement, cloud access, or access to restricted information.

Executive priority

Prioritize this technique where business-critical systems depend on reusable credentials, privileged accounts, password managers, or cloud secrets vaults. The ATT&CK relationships show relevance across Windows, macOS, Linux, and IaaS, with associated sub-techniques for browsers, keychains, Windows Credential Manager, third-party password managers, and cloud secrets management stores. Executives should ask whether privileged access management, password policy, software update practices, and audit logging provide evidence that credential stores are protected and monitored.

Technical view

SOC and IR teams should validate coverage around the credential-access tactic across IaaS, Linux, macOS, and Windows. Because the ATT&CK object provides no official detection text, use the related detection strategy DET0430 as the ATT&CK-linked starting point, then test locally against each relevant sub-technique: macOS Keychain, securityd memory access, web browser credential stores, Windows Credential Manager, password managers, and cloud secrets stores. Focus validation on access to credential storage locations, unusual privileged account use, processes interacting with sensitive credential material, and cloud API access to secrets where IaaS is in scope.

Likely telemetry

  • Endpoint process execution and command-line telemetry on Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • File access and modification events for browser, password manager, keychain, or credential store data where available
  • OS security logs showing privileged account use, elevation, or access to protected credential material
  • macOS security/keychain-related logs where collected
  • Windows authentication and Credential Manager-relevant activity where collected

Detection direction

  • Start with DET0430 as the ATT&CK-related detection strategy, but require local engineering because the parent technique has no official detection text supplied.
  • Map detections by sub-technique and platform instead of treating T1555 as one generic alert; browser stores, Windows Credential Manager, macOS Keychain, password managers, securityd memory, and cloud secrets stores produce different telemetry.
  • Tune for context: legitimate password manager use, administrator troubleshooting, browser profile access, and cloud automation may resemble credential-store access without being malicious.
  • Prioritize high-signal combinations such as unusual privileged account use plus access to credential stores, nonstandard processes touching browser or password-manager data, or unexpected cloud secrets retrieval.
  • Check blind spots in unmanaged endpoints, developer workstations, macOS/Linux fleets, and IaaS control-plane logging, where credential stores or secrets access may not be centrally monitored.

Mitigation priorities

  • Apply privileged account management first: restrict administrative, root, SYSTEM, and cloud privileged roles; enforce least privilege; and monitor privileged account usage with accountability logs.
  • Strengthen password policies to reduce reuse and improve resistance if stored credentials are exposed, while recognizing that policy alone does not prevent credential-store access.
  • Keep operating systems, browsers, password managers, and credential-handling applications updated to reduce exposure to known weaknesses in credential storage or access paths.
  • Review where credentials and secrets are stored, especially cloud secrets stores and third-party password managers, and confirm access is limited to identities and workloads with a documented business need.
  • Ensure incident response playbooks include credential rotation, token/secret revocation, and scoping of lateral movement or restricted information access after suspected credential-store access.
Analyst notes and limits

ATT&CK relationships associate this technique with multiple groups and campaigns, including financially motivated, espionage, supply-chain, and critical infrastructure-related contexts. That breadth should be used to justify defensive coverage, not to infer that any specific organization is currently targeted. The most useful defensive work is environment-specific: inventory credential stores, confirm logging, and test whether SOC workflows can distinguish expected access from suspicious access.

The supplied ATT&CK object does not include official detection guidance for T1555, so detection recommendations are derived from the technique description, platforms, sub-technique relationships, DET0430 relationship, and listed mitigations. Local platform mix, EDR/audit configuration, cloud provider logging, password-manager deployment, and privileged access design are required to determine actual coverage.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Credentials from Password Stores

Adversaries may search for common password storage locations to obtain user credentials.[1] Passwords are stored in several places on a system, depending on the operating system or application holding the credentials. There are also specific applications and services that store passwords to make them easier for users to manage and maintain, such as password managers and cloud secrets vaults. Once credentials are obtained, they can be used to perform lateral movement and access restricted information.

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.

6 rows
Domain ID Name Relationship / procedure
Enterprise T1555.004 Windows Credential Manager Sub-technique Windows Credential Manager subtechnique of this object.
Enterprise T1555.001 Keychain Sub-technique Keychain subtechnique of this object.
Enterprise T1555.005 Password Managers Sub-technique Password Managers subtechnique of this object.
Enterprise T1555.006 Cloud Secrets Management Stores Sub-technique Cloud Secrets Management Stores subtechnique of this object.
Enterprise T1555.003 Credentials from Web Browsers Sub-technique Credentials from Web Browsers subtechnique of this object.
Enterprise T1555.002 Securityd Memory Sub-technique Securityd Memory subtechnique of this object.
Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

Group Enterprise

G1001: HEXANE

HEXANE is a cyber espionage threat group that has targeted oil & gas, telecommunications, aviation, and internet service provider organizations since at least 2017. Targeted companies have been located in the Middle East and Africa, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco, and Tunisia. HEXANE's TTPs appear similar to APT33 and OilRig but due to differences in victims and tools it is tracked as a separate entity.[1][2][3][4]

Group Enterprise

G1017: Volt Typhoon

Volt Typhoon is a People's Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored actor that has been active since at least 2021, primarily targeting critical infrastructure organizations in the US and its territories including Guam. Volt Typhoon's targeting and pattern of behavior have been assessed as pre-positioning to enable lateral movement to operational technology (OT) assets for potential destructive or disruptive attacks. Volt Typhoon has emphasized stealth in operations using web shells, living-off-the-land (LOTL) binaries, hands on keyboard activities, and stolen credentials.[1][2][3][4]. The group has leveraged compromised SOHO routers to proxy command and control traffic and obscure its infrastructure, activity associated with the KV botnet.[5].

Reporting indicates a separate initial access cluster, SYLVANITE, has been observed exploiting internet-facing edge devices and transferring access to Volt Typhoon, also tracked as VOLTZITE, for follow-on operations. [6]

Group Enterprise

G0077: Leafminer

Leafminer is an Iranian threat group that has targeted government organizations and business entities in the Middle East since at least early 2017. [1]

Group Enterprise

G0038: Stealth Falcon

Stealth Falcon is a threat group that has conducted targeted spyware attacks against Emirati journalists, activists, and dissidents since at least 2012. Circumstantial evidence suggests there could be a link between this group and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government, but that has not been confirmed. [1]

Group Enterprise

G0087: APT39

APT39 is one of several names for cyber espionage activity conducted by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) through the front company Rana Intelligence Computing since at least 2014. APT39 has primarily targeted the travel, hospitality, academic, and telecommunications industries in Iran and across Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America to track individuals and entities considered to be a threat by the MOIS.[1][2][3][4][5]

Group Enterprise

G0096: APT41

APT41 is a threat group that researchers have assessed as Chinese state-sponsored espionage group that also conducts financially-motivated operations. Active since at least 2012, APT41 has been observed targeting various industries, including but not limited to healthcare, telecom, technology, finance, education, retail and video game industries in 14 countries.[1] Notable behaviors include using a wide range of malware and tools to complete mission objectives. APT41 overlaps at least partially with public reporting on groups including BARIUM and Winnti Group.[2][3]

Group Enterprise

G0064: APT33

APT33 is a suspected Iranian threat group that has carried out operations since at least 2013. The group has targeted organizations across multiple industries in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea, with a particular interest in the aviation and energy sectors.[1][2]

Group Enterprise

G0069: MuddyWater

MuddyWater is a cyber espionage group assessed to be a subordinate element within Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).[1] Since at least 2017, MuddyWater has targeted a range of government and private organizations across sectors, including telecommunications, local government, finance, defense, and oil and natural gas organizations, in the Middle East (specifically the UAE and Saudi Arabia), Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. MuddyWater has reused domains dating back to October 2025, and has a preference for NameCheap and Hosterdaddy Private Limited (AS136557). In late 2025 and early 2026, MuddyWater used commercial satellite internet (i.e., Starlink) for command and control (C2) communication. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

Group Enterprise

G0049: OilRig

OilRig is a suspected Iranian threat group that has targeted Middle Eastern and international victims since at least 2014. The group has targeted a variety of sectors, including financial, government, energy, chemical, and telecommunications. It appears the group carries out supply chain attacks, leveraging the trust relationship between organizations to attack their primary targets. The group works on behalf of the Iranian government based on infrastructure details that contain references to Iran, use of Iranian infrastructure, and targeting that aligns with nation-state interests.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]

Group Enterprise

G0037: FIN6

FIN6 is a cyber crime group that has stolen payment card data and sold it for profit on underground marketplaces. This group has aggressively targeted and compromised point of sale (PoS) systems in the hospitality and retail sectors.[1][2]

Group Enterprise

G1026: Malteiro

Malteiro is a financially motivated criminal group that is likely based in Brazil and has been active since at least November 2019. The group operates and distributes the Mispadu banking trojan via a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) business model. Malteiro mainly targets victims throughout Latin America (particularly Mexico) and Europe (particularly Spain and Portugal).[1]

Malware Enterprise

S0484: Carberp

Carberp is a credential and information stealing malware that has been active since at least 2009. Carberp's source code was leaked online in 2013, and subsequently used as the foundation for the Carbanak backdoor.[1][2][3]

Windows
Tool Enterprise

S0002: Mimikatz

Mimikatz is a credential dumper capable of obtaining plaintext Windows account logins and passwords, along with many other features that make it useful for testing the security of networks. [1] [2]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S1207: XLoader

XLoader is an infostealer malware in use since at least 2016. Previously known and sometimes still referred to as Formbook, XLoader is a Malware as a Service (MaaS) known for stealing data from web browsers, email clients and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) applications.[1][2][3][4][5]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S0447: Lokibot

Lokibot is a widely distributed information stealer that was first reported in 2015. It is designed to steal sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, cryptocurrency wallets, and other credentials. Lokibot can also create a backdoor into infected systems to allow an attacker to install additional payloads.[1][2][3]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S1146: MgBot

MgBot is a modular malware framework exclusively associated with Daggerfly operations since at least 2012. MgBot was developed in C++ and features a module design with multiple available plugins that have been under active development through 2024.[1][2][3]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S1156: Manjusaka

Manjusaka is a Chinese-language intrusion framework, similar to Sliver and Cobalt Strike, with an ELF binary written in GoLang as the controller for Windows and Linux implants written in Rust. First identified in 2022, Manjusaka consists of multiple components, only one of which (a command and control module) is freely available.[1]

LinuxWindows
Malware Enterprise

S0167: Matryoshka

Matryoshka is a malware framework used by CopyKittens that consists of a dropper, loader, and RAT. It has multiple versions; v1 was seen in the wild from July 2016 until January 2017. v2 has fewer commands and other minor differences. [1] [2]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S0113: Prikormka

Prikormka is a malware family used in a campaign known as Operation Groundbait. It has predominantly been observed in Ukraine and was used as early as 2008. [1]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S0435: PLEAD

PLEAD is a remote access tool (RAT) and downloader used by BlackTech in targeted attacks in East Asia including Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong.[1][2] PLEAD has also been referred to as TSCookie, though more recent reporting indicates likely separation between the two. PLEAD was observed in use as early as March 2017.[3][2]

Windows
Malware Enterprise

S1246: BeaverTail

BeaverTail is a malware that has both a JavaScript and C++ variant. Active since 2022, BeaverTail is capable of stealing logins from browsers and serves as a downloader for second stage payloads. BeaverTail has previously been leveraged by North Korea-affiliated actors identified as DeceptiveDevelopment or Contagious Interview. BeaverTail has been delivered to victims through code repository sites and has been embedded within malicious attachments.[1][2][3][4]

LinuxmacOSWindows
Campaign Enterprise

C0063: 2025 Poland Wiper Attacks

2025 Poland Wiper Attacks is a Russian state-sponsored campaign that conducted destructive cyberattacks against Polish energy infrastructure in December 2025. Targets included more than 30 wind and photovoltaic farms, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, and a manufacturing sector company. The attacks on the distributed energy resources (DER) disrupted communications between affected facilities and the distribution system operator, but did not impact electricity generation or heat supply. Across the campaign, threat actors deployed two previously undocumented wiper tools, DynoWiper, a Windows-based wiper and LazyWiper, a PowerShell wiper, distributed via malicious Group Policy Objects. At the CHP plant, threat actors had maintained access since at least March 2025, using that foothold to obtain credentials and move laterally before attempting wiper deployment. Some reporting has assessed the activity to be consistent with Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) threat activity group Dragonfly, also tracked as STATIC TUNDRA, while other reporting attributes the destructive wiper activities to the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) threat activity group ELECTRUM, also tracked as Sandworm Team.[1][2][3][4]

Campaign Enterprise

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]

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

Mitigations

Mitigation direction

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
1.2
Created
Modified
Raw hash
10de00e1e5920d9e...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
Release Bundle imported Object version Modified Status Raw hash
19.1 1.2 Current bundle 10de00e1e592…
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]
    F-Secure The Dukes

    F-Secure Labs. (2015, September 17). The Dukes: 7 years of Russian cyberespionage. Retrieved December 10, 2015.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    mitre-attack T1555
    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.