Suspicious Domain Trust Discovery via Nltest

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1069.002Domain Groups
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the nltest utility enumerating domain trusts, a reconnaissance step performed after GoldMelody gained code execution through ASP.NET ViewState deserialization. Adversaries map domain trust relationships to plan lateral movement. While administrators occasionally use nltest, its execution from web-facing hosts is suspicious.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1069.002 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious SOAPHound Style LDAP Query with SDflags and all_with_list via security

Suspicious SOAPHound Null Filter LDAP Query via security

Suspicious SharpHound Group Enumeration LDAP Filter

Suspicious LDAP Security Descriptor Enumeration via SD_FLAGS Control

Suspicious Delegation Discovery LDAP Search Filter via Bitwise OID

Suspicious Kerberoasting LDAP Search Filter for Service Principal Names

Suspicious Service Principal Name Discovery via setspn Query

Malicious Active Directory Enumeration via SharpHound or BloodHound (via process_creation)

Suspicious Group Discovery - Command (via process_creation)

Suspicious Domain Trust Discovery via Nltest

Pivot detection · T1069.002 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →