Malicious ESX Admins Group Added to Privileged Directory Group

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078Valid Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078Valid Accounts
- T1098.007Additional Local or Domain Groups
Priv Esc
- T1078Valid Accounts
- T1098.007Additional Local or Domain Groups
Defense Evasion
- T1078Valid Accounts
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects an Active Directory security event adding an ESX Admins group or member, matching the UNC3944 method of creating that specific group name to inherit administrative access to vSphere through its default AD integration. The distinctive group name indicates targeting of the virtualization estate rather than routine administration.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1078 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious ESX Admins Group Added to Privileged Directory Group

Pivot detection · T1078 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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