Unsecured Credentials: Credentials in Registry T1552.002
Tactic: Credential Access
Adversaries may search the Registry on compromised systems for insecurely stored credentials. The Windows Registry stores configuration information that can be used by the system or other programs. Adversaries may query the Registry looking for credentials and passwords that have been stored for use by other programs or services. Sometimes these credentials are used for automatic logons.
Events covered
7 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 10 | ProcessAccess |
| Sysmon | Event ID 12 | RegistryEvent (Object create and delete) |
| Sysmon | Event ID 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4656 | A handle to an object was requested. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4690 | An attempt was made to duplicate a handle to an object. |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 10 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (15 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (63 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (3 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 4 rules
- Enumeration for 3rd Party Creds From CLI
- Enumeration for Credentials in Registry
- Registry Export of Third-Party Credentials
- SAM Registry Hive Handle Request