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T1069 Permission Groups Discovery

Adversaries may attempt to discover group and permission settings. This information can help adversaries determine which user accounts and groups are available, the membership of users in particular groups, and which users and groups have elevated permissions.

Adversaries may attempt to discover group permission settings in many different ways. This data may provide the adversary with information about the compromised environment that can be used in follow-on activity and targeting.2

Item Value
ID T1069
Sub-techniques T1069.001, T1069.002, T1069.003
Tactics TA0007
Platforms Containers, IaaS, Identity Provider, Linux, Office Suite, SaaS, Windows, macOS
Version 2.6
Created 31 May 2017
Last Modified 24 October 2025

Procedure Examples

ID Name Description
G0022 APT3 APT3 has a tool that can enumerate the permissions associated with Windows groups.14
G0096 APT41 APT41 used net group commands to enumerate various Windows user groups and permissions.9
S0335 Carbon Carbon uses the net group command.5
G1016 FIN13 FIN13 has enumerated all users and roles from a victim’s main treasury system.15
S0483 IcedID IcedID has the ability to identify Workgroup membership.4
S0233 MURKYTOP MURKYTOP has the capability to retrieve information about groups.7
G1015 Scattered Spider Scattered Spider has enumerated the vSphere Admins and ESX Admins groups in targeted environments.10
S0445 ShimRatReporter ShimRatReporter gathered the local privileges for the infected host.3
S0623 Siloscape Siloscape checks for Kubernetes node permissions.8
C0024 SolarWinds Compromise During the SolarWinds Compromise, APT29 used the Get-ManagementRoleAssignment PowerShell cmdlet to enumerate Exchange management role assignments through an Exchange Management Shell.16
G0092 TA505 TA505 has used TinyMet to enumerate members of privileged groups.11 TA505 has also run net group /domain.12
S0266 TrickBot TrickBot can identify the groups the user on a compromised host belongs to.6
G1017 Volt Typhoon Volt Typhoon has used commercial tools, LOTL utilities, and appliances already present on the system for group and user discovery.13

References

  1. Kubernetes. (n.d.). Authorization Overview. Retrieved June 24, 2021. ↩

  2. Red Team Labs. (2018, April 24). Hidden Administrative Accounts: BloodHound to the Rescue. Retrieved October 28, 2020. ↩

  3. Yonathan Klijnsma. (2016, May 17). Mofang: A politically motivated information stealing adversary. Retrieved May 12, 2020. ↩

  4. Kessem, L., et al. (2017, November 13). New Banking Trojan IcedID Discovered by IBM X-Force Research. Retrieved July 14, 2020. ↩

  5. GovCERT. (2016, May 23). Technical Report about the Espionage Case at RUAG. Retrieved November 7, 2018. ↩

  6. Dahan, A. et al. (2019, December 11). DROPPING ANCHOR: FROM A TRICKBOT INFECTION TO THE DISCOVERY OF THE ANCHOR MALWARE. Retrieved September 10, 2020. ↩

  7. FireEye. (2018, March 16). Suspected Chinese Cyber Espionage Group (TEMP.Periscope) Targeting U.S. Engineering and Maritime Industries. Retrieved April 11, 2018. ↩

  8. Prizmant, D. (2021, June 7). Siloscape: First Known Malware Targeting Windows Containers to Compromise Cloud Environments. Retrieved June 9, 2021. ↩

  9. Nikita Rostovcev. (2022, August 18). APT41 World Tour 2021 on a tight schedule. Retrieved February 22, 2024. ↩

  10. Mandiant Incident Response. (2025, July 23). From Help Desk to Hypervisor: Defending Your VMware vSphere Estate from UNC3944. Retrieved October 13, 2025. ↩

  11. Frydrych, M. (2020, April 14). TA505 Continues to Infect Networks With SDBbot RAT. Retrieved May 29, 2020. ↩

  12. Hiroaki, H. and Lu, L. (2019, June 12). Shifting Tactics: Breaking Down TA505 Group’s Use of HTML, RATs and Other Techniques in Latest Campaigns. Retrieved May 29, 2020. ↩

  13. CISA et al.. (2024, February 7). PRC State-Sponsored Actors Compromise and Maintain Persistent Access to U.S. Critical Infrastructure. Retrieved May 15, 2024. ↩

  14. Symantec Security Response. (2016, September 6). Buckeye cyberespionage group shifts gaze from US to Hong Kong. Retrieved September 26, 2016. ↩

  15. Ta, V., et al. (2022, August 8). FIN13: A Cybercriminal Threat Actor Focused on Mexico. Retrieved February 9, 2023. ↩

  16. Cash, D. et al. (2020, December 14). Dark Halo Leverages SolarWinds Compromise to Breach Organizations. Retrieved December 29, 2020. ↩