Enumeration of Administrator Accounts
Identifies instances of lower privilege accounts enumerating Administrator accounts or groups using built-in Windows tools.
Elastic rule (View on GitHub)
1[metadata]
2creation_date = "2020/12/04"
3integration = ["endpoint", "windows"]
4maturity = "production"
5min_stack_comments = "New fields added: required_fields, related_integrations, setup"
6min_stack_version = "8.3.0"
7updated_date = "2023/06/22"
8
9[rule]
10author = ["Elastic"]
11description = """
12Identifies instances of lower privilege accounts enumerating Administrator accounts or groups using built-in Windows
13tools.
14"""
15from = "now-9m"
16index = ["logs-endpoint.events.*", "winlogbeat-*", "logs-windows.*", "endgame-*"]
17language = "eql"
18license = "Elastic License v2"
19name = "Enumeration of Administrator Accounts"
20note = """## Triage and analysis
21
22### Investigating Enumeration of Administrator Accounts
23
24After successfully compromising an environment, attackers may try to gain situational awareness to plan their next steps. This can happen by running commands to enumerate network resources, users, connections, files, and installed security software.
25
26This rule looks for the execution of the `net` and `wmic` utilities to enumerate administrator-related users or groups in the domain and local machine scope. Attackers can use this information to plan their next steps of the attack, such as mapping targets for credential compromise and other post-exploitation activities.
27
28#### Possible investigation steps
29
30- Investigate the process execution chain (parent process tree) for unknown processes. Examine their executable files for prevalence, whether they are located in expected locations, and if they are signed with valid digital signatures.
31- Identify the user account that performed the action and whether it should perform this kind of action.
32- Investigate other alerts associated with the user/host during the past 48 hours.
33- Investigate any abnormal account behavior, such as command executions, file creations or modifications, and network connections.
34
35### False positive analysis
36
37- Discovery activities are not inherently malicious if they occur in isolation. As long as the analyst did not identify suspicious activity related to the user or host, such alerts can be dismissed.
38
39### Related rules
40
41- AdFind Command Activity - eda499b8-a073-4e35-9733-22ec71f57f3a
42
43### Response and remediation
44
45- Initiate the incident response process based on the outcome of the triage.
46- Isolate the involved hosts to prevent further post-compromise behavior.
47- Investigate credential exposure on systems compromised or used by the attacker to ensure all compromised accounts are identified. Reset passwords for these accounts and other potentially compromised credentials, such as email, business systems, and web services.
48- Run a full antimalware scan. This may reveal additional artifacts left in the system, persistence mechanisms, and malware components.
49- Determine the initial vector abused by the attacker and take action to prevent reinfection through the same vector.
50- Using the incident response data, update logging and audit policies to improve the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to respond (MTTR).
51
52## Setup
53
54If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.
55"""
56risk_score = 21
57rule_id = "871ea072-1b71-4def-b016-6278b505138d"
58severity = "low"
59tags = ["Domain: Endpoint", "OS: Windows", "Use Case: Threat Detection", "Tactic: Discovery", "Resources: Investigation Guide", "Data Source: Elastic Endgame", "Data Source: Elastic Defend"]
60timestamp_override = "event.ingested"
61type = "eql"
62
63query = '''
64process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
65(
66 (((process.name : "net.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name == "net.exe") or
67 ((process.name : "net1.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name == "net1.exe") and
68 not process.parent.name : "net.exe")) and
69 process.args : ("group", "user", "localgroup") and
70 process.args : ("*admin*", "Domain Admins", "Remote Desktop Users", "Enterprise Admins", "Organization Management") and
71 not process.args : "/add")
72
73 or
74
75 ((process.name : "wmic.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name == "wmic.exe") and
76 process.args : ("group", "useraccount"))
77)
78'''
79
80
81[[rule.threat]]
82framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"
83[[rule.threat.technique]]
84id = "T1069"
85name = "Permission Groups Discovery"
86reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1069/"
87[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
88id = "T1069.001"
89name = "Local Groups"
90reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1069/001/"
91[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
92id = "T1069.002"
93name = "Domain Groups"
94reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1069/002/"
95
96
97[[rule.threat.technique]]
98id = "T1087"
99name = "Account Discovery"
100reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1087/"
101[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
102id = "T1087.001"
103name = "Local Account"
104reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1087/001/"
105[[rule.threat.technique.subtechnique]]
106id = "T1087.002"
107name = "Domain Account"
108reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1087/002/"
109
110
111[rule.threat.tactic]
112id = "TA0007"
113name = "Discovery"
114reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0007/"
Triage and analysis
Investigating Enumeration of Administrator Accounts
After successfully compromising an environment, attackers may try to gain situational awareness to plan their next steps. This can happen by running commands to enumerate network resources, users, connections, files, and installed security software.
This rule looks for the execution of the net
and wmic
utilities to enumerate administrator-related users or groups in the domain and local machine scope. Attackers can use this information to plan their next steps of the attack, such as mapping targets for credential compromise and other post-exploitation activities.
Possible investigation steps
- Investigate the process execution chain (parent process tree) for unknown processes. Examine their executable files for prevalence, whether they are located in expected locations, and if they are signed with valid digital signatures.
- Identify the user account that performed the action and whether it should perform this kind of action.
- Investigate other alerts associated with the user/host during the past 48 hours.
- Investigate any abnormal account behavior, such as command executions, file creations or modifications, and network connections.
False positive analysis
- Discovery activities are not inherently malicious if they occur in isolation. As long as the analyst did not identify suspicious activity related to the user or host, such alerts can be dismissed.
Related rules
- AdFind Command Activity - eda499b8-a073-4e35-9733-22ec71f57f3a
Response and remediation
- Initiate the incident response process based on the outcome of the triage.
- Isolate the involved hosts to prevent further post-compromise behavior.
- Investigate credential exposure on systems compromised or used by the attacker to ensure all compromised accounts are identified. Reset passwords for these accounts and other potentially compromised credentials, such as email, business systems, and web services.
- Run a full antimalware scan. This may reveal additional artifacts left in the system, persistence mechanisms, and malware components.
- Determine the initial vector abused by the attacker and take action to prevent reinfection through the same vector.
- Using the incident response data, update logging and audit policies to improve the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to respond (MTTR).
Setup
If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define event.ingested
and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate event.ingested
to @timestamp for this rule to work.
Related rules
- AdFind Command Activity
- Enumerating Domain Trusts via DSQUERY.EXE
- Enumerating Domain Trusts via NLTEST.EXE
- Peripheral Device Discovery
- Remote System Discovery Commands