← LeaderboardThe Skill Leaderboard

hunting-for-t1098-account-manipulation

Hunts for MITRE ATT&CK T1098 account manipulation - shadow admin creation, SID history injection, group membership changes, and credential modifications - by analyzing Windows Security Event Log IDs 4738, 4728, 4732, 4756, 4670, and 5136. Use when investigating suspected privilege persistence in Active Directory, after detecting anomalous group/credential changes, or during incident response to trace account tampering.

Published by mukul975 ↗mukul975/Anthropic-Cybersecurity-Skills

Try your first task

Start a fresh conversation. Replace the highlighted placeholders.

Use hunting-for-t1098-account-manipulation to analyze [EVTX files or SIEM access] for T1098 account changes, correlate suspicious group and credential modifications, and return prioritized findings with supporting events.

Required inputs

[EVTX files or SIEM access]

User-approved starter prompt based on a pinned source version; check current skill requirements before running. Task evidence ↗

SKILL.md

name: hunting-for-t1098-account-manipulationdescription: Hunts for MITRE ATT&CK T1098 account manipulation - shadow admin creation, SID history injection, group membership changes, and credential modifications - by analyzing Windows Security Event Log IDs 4738, 4728, 4732, 4756, 4670, and 5136. Use when investigating suspected privilege persistence in Active Directory, after detecting anomalous group/credential changes, or during incident response to trace account tampering.domain: cybersecuritysubdomain: threat-huntingtags: - threat-hunting- mitre-attack- t1098- account-manipulation- active-directory- persistenceversion: '1.0'author: mahipallicense: Apache-2.0d3fend_techniques: - Token Binding- Restore Access- Application Protocol Command Analysis- Password Authentication- Biometric Authenticationnist_csf: - DE.CM-01- DE.AE-02- DE.AE-07- ID.RA-05mitre_attack: - T1046- T1057- T1082- T1083- T1003

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.