Hunting for T1098 Account Manipulation

Overview

MITRE ATT&CK T1098 (Account Manipulation) covers adversary actions to maintain or expand access to compromised accounts, including adding credentials, modifying group memberships, SID history injection, and creating shadow admin accounts. This skill covers detecting these techniques through Windows Security Event Log analysis (Event IDs 4738, 4728, 4732, 4756, 4670, 5136), correlating group membership changes with privilege escalation indicators, and identifying anomalous account modification patterns.

When to Use

When investigating security incidents that require hunting for t1098 account manipulation
When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques

Prerequisites

Windows Security Event Logs (EVTX format) or SIEM access
Python 3.9+ with python-evtx, lxml libraries
Understanding of Active Directory group structure and SID architecture
Familiarity with MITRE ATT&CK T1098 sub-techniques

Steps

Step 1: Parse Account Modification Events

Extract Event IDs 4738 (user account changed), 4728/4732/4756 (member added to security groups), and 5136 (directory service object modified).

Step 2: Detect Privileged Group Changes

Flag additions to Domain Admins, Enterprise Admins, Schema Admins, Administrators, and Backup Operators groups.

Step 3: Identify Shadow Admin Indicators

Detect accounts receiving AdminSDHolder protection, direct privilege assignment, or SID history injection.

Step 4: Correlate with Attack Timeline

Cross-reference account changes with authentication events to identify initial compromise and persistence establishment.

Expected Output

JSON report with detected account manipulation events, privileged group changes, shadow admin indicators, and timeline correlation.

Hunting For T1098 Account Manipulation