Applied Cybernetics Group
T1110.003 Password Spraying
- Technique
T1110.003- Tactics
- Credential Access
- Research, 90 days
- 3
- KEV CVEs mapped
- 0
- SigmaHQ rules
- 0
- Elastic, Splunk
- 71
- thrunt rules
- 0
- Upstream
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1110/003
MITRE description
Adversaries may use a single or small list of commonly used passwords against many different accounts to attempt to acquire valid account credentials. Password spraying uses one password (e.g. 'Password01'), or a small list of commonly used passwords, that may match the complexity policy of the domain. Logins are attempted with that password against many different accounts on a network to avoid account lockouts that would normally occur when brute forcing a single account with many passwords.(Citation: BlackHillsInfosec Password Spraying) Typically, management services over commonly used ports are used when password spraying. Commonly targeted services include the following: * SSH (22/TCP) * Telnet (23/TCP) * FTP (21/TCP) * NetBIOS / SMB / Samba (139/TCP & 445/TCP) * LDAP (389/TCP) * Kerberos (88/TCP) * RDP / Terminal Services (3389/TCP) * HTTP/HTTP Management Services (80/TCP & 443/TCP) * MSSQL (1433/TCP) * Oracle (1521/TCP) * MySQL (3306/TCP) * VNC (5900/TCP) In addition to management services, adversaries may "target single sign-on (SSO) and cloud-based applications utilizing federated authentication protocols," as well as externally facing email applications, such as Office 365.(Citation: US-CERT TA18-068A 2018) In order to avoid detection thresholds, adversaries may deliberately throttle password spraying attempts to avoid triggering security alerting. Additionally, adversaries may leverage LDAP and Kerberos authentication attempts, which are less likely to trigger high-visibility events such as Windows "logon failure" event ID 4625 that is commonly triggered by failed SMB connection attempts.(Citation: Microsoft Storm-0940)
Research citing this technique
Reports and advisories from the last 90 days that cite this technique.
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2026-10-29Cisco Talos: IR trends Q3 2026: Actors impersonate IT help desks in vishing attacks as ransomware activity increases -
2026-10-26Huntress: AI, Scripts, Operator: Inside the ConnectWise Attack -
2026-10-21Group-IB: Stray Cat, Open Doors: How k0t Wanders Through the Network Edge
Detection coverage
Elastic and Splunk rules
- AWS Root Console Login Password Spraying (elastic)
- Entra ID User Sign-in Brute Force Attempted (elastic)
- Entra ID Excessive Account Lockouts Detected (elastic)
- Entra ID ROPC Authentication with Unknown Client ID (elastic)
- Entra ID Sign-in Brute Force Attempted (Microsoft 365) (elastic)
- Entra ID Sign-in TeamFiltration User-Agent Detected (elastic)
- Entra ID Protection - Risk Detection - Sign-in Risk (elastic)
- Entra ID Protection - Risk Detection - User Risk (elastic)
- Potential SSH Brute Force Detected via macOS Security Events (elastic)
- Potential Successful SSH Brute Force Attack via macOS Security Events (elastic)
- M365 Identity User Brute Force Attempted (elastic)
- M365 Identity User Account Lockouts (elastic)
- Attempts to Brute Force an Okta User Account (elastic)
- Multiple Okta User Auth Events with Same Device Token Hash Behind a Proxy (elastic)
- Multiple Okta User Authentication Events with Same Device Token Hash (elastic)
- Potential Okta Password Spray (Multi-Source) (elastic)
- Potential Okta Password Spray (Single Source) (elastic)
- Okta Successful Login After Credential Attack (elastic)
- Potential External Linux SSH Brute Force Detected (elastic)
- Potential Internal Linux SSH Brute Force Detected (elastic)
- Potential Password Spraying Attack via SSH (elastic)
- Potential Successful SSH Brute Force Attack (elastic)
- Spike in Failed Logon Events (elastic)
- Spike in Logon Events (elastic)
- Spike in Successful Logon Events from a Source IP (elastic)
Showing 25 of 71.