Suspicious Creation of ctxsvc Local Account via net Command

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 creation of a local user or group membership change for the ctxsvc account using net.exe, matching the persistence activity in the CitrixBleed 2 to DragonForce ransomware intrusion. Adversaries create a ctxsvc account masquerading as a Citrix service account and add it to privileged groups to maintain access. Creation of this account name is a persistence indicator on NetScaler-adjacent hosts.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1136.001 — drag to rearrange

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ScreenConnect Administrator Provisioning XML Written to Temp Directory (CWE-288)

Suspicious Rogue VeeamBkp Account Creation by Estate Ransomware

Malicious Account Added to Domain Admins via net localgroup

Suspicious Creation of ctxsvc Local Account via net Command

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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