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AD-USER-26: Honey pot user count should be investigated

ID AD-USER-26
Severity Info
Suite Active Directory (on-premises)
Product Active Directory
Feature Users
Security area Logging and detection
Resource type User
Reads from On-premises Active Directory

Accounts with names that look especially attractive to attackers can be useful as deliberate decoys, but they can also reflect risky naming practices or forgotten identities that warrant review.

  • Threat detection support: Decoy-style names can be monitored for malicious interaction.
  • Naming hygiene: Identifies user names likely to draw attacker attention.
  • Access review: Confirms whether these accounts are intentional and documented.

Operational

  • Document whether identified accounts are real users, service accounts, or deception assets.
  • Apply strong monitoring to any deliberate honey pot or lure account.
  • Disable or clean up misleading accounts that no longer serve a purpose.

This test counts non-system user accounts whose names match attractive terms such as admin, root, test, backup, or sql.

  • Test-MtAdUserHoneyPotDetails
  • Test-MtAdUserBuiltInAdminEnabledDetails

Mito check. Author: soulemike. Open-source licences.

Open-source licences. CIS Benchmark material © Center for Internet Security, Inc.; CISA SCuBA baselines are public domain (CC0).

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