Rogue Privileged Account Names on Cisco IOS XE
- Product
- cisco
- Service
- aaa
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-07-14
- Updated
- 2026-08-28
ATT&CK techniques
PersistenceRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
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
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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