Suspicious Cisco IOS XE Privileged Account Creation via CVE-2023-20198

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Persistence

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1190Exploit Public-Facing Application
Execution
Persistence
- T1136Create Account
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of the privileged local accounts cisco_tac_admin and cisco_support that are dropped when the Cisco IOS XE Web UI is exploited through CVE-2023-20198. These account names are strong campaign specific indicators of unauthorized administrative access and should be treated as a compromise of the network device.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Cisco IOS XE Privileged Account Creation via CVE-2023-20198

Pivot detection · T1190 · 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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