Official Description

Adversaries may obtain and abuse credentials of a local account as a means of gaining Initial Access, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, or Defense Evasion. Local accounts are those configured by an organization for use by users, remote support, services, or for administration on a single system or service.

Local Accounts may also be abused to elevate privileges and harvest credentials through [OS Credential Dumping](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1003). Password reuse may allow the abuse of local accounts across a set of machines on a network for the purposes of Privilege Escalation and Lateral Movement.
Tactics
Stealth, Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Initial Access
Platforms
Containers, ESXi, Linux, macOS, Network Devices, Windows
Parent Technique
T1078 · Valid Accounts
MITRE Version
2.0
Last Modified
May 12, 2026

View on MITRE ATT&CK ↗