Platforms / Security resources

MITRE ATT&CK

Enterprise v20 / 15 tactics / 227 techniques / 479 sub-techniques

Discovery / T1087

Account Discovery

Technique / Enterprise ATT&CK

Official MITRE entry

Adversaries may attempt to get a listing of valid accounts, usernames, or email addresses on a system or within a compromised environment. This information can help adversaries determine which accounts exist, which can aid in follow-on behavior such as brute-forcing, spear-phishing attacks, or account takeovers (e.g., Valid Accounts).

Adversaries may use several methods to enumerate accounts, including abuse of existing tools, built-in commands, and potential misconfigurations that leak account names and roles or permissions in the targeted environment.

For examples, cloud environments typically provide easily accessible interfaces to obtain user lists.(Citation: AWS List Users)(Citation: Google Cloud - IAM Servie Accounts List API) On hosts, adversaries can use default PowerShell and other command line functionality to identify accounts. Information about email addresses and accounts may also be extracted by searching an infected system’s files.

Sub-techniques

Source references

Source: MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v20, retrieved 2026-10-31. MITRE ATT&CK is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.