A General Inventory of Empirical Identities (Research Note - IAM)

Context

IAM

Title

A General Inventory of Empirical Identities

Version

1.1 The inventory is very incomplete but the methodology is ok

Summary

There are several loosely defined or implied typologies or taxonomies of identities in the literature. In order to facilitate the construction of taxonomies, it is necessary to establish first an inventory of empirical entities from which to build the taxonomy. The objective of this section is to build such an inventory.

See Also

TODO

Enrich the inventory with a majority of Windows “well-known” identities
Enrich the inventory with Linux equivalent
Enrich the inventory with “exotic” cases such as BIOS credentials, certificates, etc.

A taxonomy (Taxonomy (Dictionary Entry)) is defined by bailey (Bailey, 1994) as a classification of empirical (observable) entities. In that it is distinct, if not the opposite of a typology that is a classification of concepts (c.f.: Typology (Dictionary Entry)).

To enable the construction of robust identity taxonomies, it is thus necessary to establish an inventory of empirical (observable) entities, to arbitrage if these entities are of the class identity or not and to describe these entities.

In order to progressively establish this inventory, a table structure is provided below. The approach shall then consist in progressively referencing items found in the field and/or the literature.

There is a necessary catch-22 here: to designate the empirical entity, we need to use a term and that term itself will be a type (that is a concept). We thus need to find a balance and use classes of empirical entities that are as atomic and as unambiguous as possible, while not being unnecessarily fine-grained. For instance, a local user of an OS family may be an interesting object to consider because it has unique properties. But it may not be necessary to specifically consider the local users of every version of that OS family as distinct empirical entities. Conversely, the generic class local user may be too vague in view of the diversity of shapes and forms it may take in certain OS families.

The more exhaustive this inventory will be, the more exhaustive will be the taxonomies based upon it. Thus, in order to privilege exhaustivity over consistency, this inventory is not composed of mutually exclusive classes but overlaps should be documented to facilitate the analysis of the inventory.

In view of the number of documented empirical entities, the inventory could not possibly be exhaustive but at least it should become representative of this wide variety.

To privilege concision and readability, definitions are provided as link to dictionary entries.

Empirical Entity

Of Identity Class?

Comments

Empirical Entity

Of Identity Class?

Comments

Windows DefaultAccount Account

???

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local User Account.

  • This object if of particular interest for classification purposes because it is defined as multi-user or user-agnostic.

Windows Default Local System Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Local Account

  • Childrent Types: Windows LOCAL SERVICE Account, Windows NETWORK SERVICE Account, Windows SYSTEM Account

Windows Default Local User Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Local Account

  • Childrent Types: Windows Administrator Account, Windows Guest Account, Windows HelpAssistant Account, Windows DefaultAccount Account

Windows Guest Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local User Account.

Windows HelpAssistant Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local User Account.

Windows Local Account

Yes

  • Children Types: Windows Default Local System Account, Windows Default Local User Account, Windows Local User Account

Windows Local Administrator Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local User Account.

Windows LOCAL SERVICE Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local System Account

Windows (Non-Default) Local User Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Local Account

Windows NETWORK SERVICE Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local System Account

Windows SYSTEM Account

Yes

  • Parent Type: Windows Default Local System Account

 


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