Suspicious Active Directory Database Theft via ntds.dit Access

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1003.003NTDS
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects command lines that reference the ntds.dit Active Directory database alongside ntdsutil or volume shadow copy operations used to extract it. Copying ntds.dit from a domain controller yields the password hashes for every domain account.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1003.003 — drag to rearrange

Active Directory Database Dump via Ntdsutil IFM

Malicious NTDS.dit Extraction via Ntdsutil (via process_creation)

Malicious NTDS Extraction via ntdsutil IFM (via process_creation)

Malicious NTDS Database Staging to Audit Directory (via file_event)

IFM Creation Detected from Commandline - Installation from Media (via process_creation)

Malicious Credential Hive Copy from Volume Shadow Copy

Malicious File Copy via Esentutl Volume Shadow Access (via process_creation)

Malicious NTDS Extraction via NetExec (via process_creation)

Malicious Active Directory Database Dump via ntdsutil IFM (via process_creation)

Suspicious Active Directory Database Theft via ntds.dit Access

Pivot detection · T1003.003 · 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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