Rogue Privileged Account Names on Cisco IOS XE

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence

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

What it detects

This rule detects references to the rogue privilege-15 account names created during active exploitation of the Cisco IOS XE Web UI vulnerability. Attackers created local accounts named cisco_tac_admin, cisco_support and cisco_sys_manager to maintain administrative access. These specific usernames are attacker-chosen masquerade artifacts and should never exist in a normal configuration.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1136.001 — drag to rearrange

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

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

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 Local Account Creation on Linux (via process_creation)

Possible Atlassian Confluence CVE-2023-22518 Setup-Restore Exploitation via Webserver (via webserver)

Possible Atlassian Confluence CVE-2023-22515 Setup Recovery Exploitation via Webserver (via webserver)

Suspicious Local Account Creation via Net Command

Rogue Privileged Account Names on Cisco IOS XE

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.

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