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T1552.003: T1552.003

View on MITRE ATT&CK The MITRE Corporation · Published 16/12/2025 19:38 · Modified 27/03/2026 01:10

Essential information

MITRE technique ID
T1552.003
Confidence
100/100
Revoked
No
Published
16/12/2025 19:38
Modified
27/03/2026 01:10
Author / Source
The MITRE Corporation

Aliases

Shell History

Platforms

windows macos linux

Description

Adversaries may search the command history on compromised systems for insecurely stored credentials. On Linux and macOS systems, shells such as Bash and Zsh keep track of the commands users type on the command-line with the "history" utility. Once a user logs out, the history is flushed to the user's history file. For each user, this file resides at the same location: for example, `~/.bash_history` or `~/.zsh_history`. Typically, these files keeps track of the user's last 1000 commands. On Windows, PowerShell has both a command history that is wiped after the session ends, and one that contains commands used in all sessions and is persistent. The default location for persistent history can be found in `%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadline\ConsoleHost_history.txt`, but command history can also be accessed with `Get-History`. Command Prompt (CMD) on Windows does not have persistent history.(Citation: Microsoft about_History)(Citation: Medium) Users often type usernames and passwords on the command-line as parameters to programs, which then get saved to this file when they log out. Adversaries can abuse this by looking through the file for potential credentials.(Citation: External to DA, the OS X Way)

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