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T1552.001: T1552.001

View on MITRE ATT&CK The MITRE Corporation · Published 04/02/2020 13:52 · Modified 27/03/2026 01:10

Essential information

MITRE technique ID
T1552.001
Confidence
100/100
Revoked
No
Published
04/02/2020 13:52
Modified
27/03/2026 01:10
Author / Source
The MITRE Corporation

Aliases

Credentials In Files

Platforms

windows macos linux Containers IaaS

Description

Adversaries may search local file systems and remote file shares for files containing insecurely stored credentials. These can be files created by users to store their own credentials, shared credential stores for a group of individuals, configuration files containing passwords for a system or service, or source code/binary files containing embedded passwords. It is possible to extract passwords from backups or saved virtual machines through [OS Credential Dumping](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1003).(Citation: CG 2014) Passwords may also be obtained from Group Policy Preferences stored on the Windows Domain Controller.(Citation: SRD GPP) In cloud and/or containerized environments, authenticated user and service account credentials are often stored in local configuration and credential files.(Citation: Unit 42 Hildegard Malware) They may also be found as parameters to deployment commands in container logs.(Citation: Unit 42 Unsecured Docker Daemons) In some cases, these files can be copied and reused on another machine or the contents can be read and then used to authenticate without needing to copy any files.(Citation: Specter Ops - Cloud Credential Storage)

Kill chain phases

Kill chainPhase
mitre-attack credential-access

Marking (TLP)

TLP:CLEAR Copyright 2015-2025, The MITRE Corporation. MITRE ATT&CK and ATT&CK are registered trademarks of The MITRE Corporation.

External references

Related entities

Intrusion sets, malware, reports, vulnerabilities, indicators and other entities linked to this technique.