Malicious Local Administrator Added by Atera RMM Agent

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1078Valid Accounts
Execution
Persistence
- T1078Valid Accounts
- T1136.001Local Account
Priv Esc
- T1078Valid Accounts
Defense Evasion
- T1078Valid Accounts
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the AteraAgent process spawning net.exe to add an account to the local administrators group, an abuse chain Huntress observed during bulk attacks leveraging RMM tools against MSP-managed endpoints. Attackers who gain access to an RMM tenant push commands that create privileged accounts for persistence. Privileged account changes originating from an RMM agent are a strong indicator of tenant abuse.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1136.001 — drag to rearrange

Possible Next.js Middleware Auth Bypass via X-Middleware-Subrequest Header (CVE-2025-29927)

Malicious Dynamicweb Unauthenticated Administrator Creation via Setup Default.aspx (via webserver)

Suspicious Hidden Backdoor Account Creation Ending With Dollar Sign (via process_creation)

Suspicious Brutforce with Denied Access Due to Account Restrictions Policies (via security)

Suspicious Success Login Attempt on a Windows OpenSSH Server (via security)

Malicious User Creation via Commandline (via process_creation)

Suspicious Local Account Creation and Privileged Group Addition via Net.EXE (via process_creation)

Suspicious Hidden Local Account Creation via Dscl (via process_creation)

Suspicious SQL Server - Connection Attempt Using a Disabled Account (via application)

Malicious Local Administrator Added by Atera RMM Agent

Pivot detection · T1136.001 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →