Suspicious DNS Zone Enumeration via dnscmd

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1016System Network Configuration Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects dnscmd.exe enumerating or printing DNS zones, a discovery technique used by espionage actors against Asian governments to map internal hosts and infrastructure from a compromised DNS server.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1016 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Wi-Fi Credential Harvesting via netsh wlan show profile (via process_creation)

Suspicious Failed DNS Server Zone Transfer for Enumeration Purposes (via dns-server)

Suspicious Reconnaissance Spawned by Injected SearchProtocolHost via process_creation

Suspicious DNS Zone Enumeration via dnscmd

Pivot detection · T1016 · 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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