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

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Suspicious Group Discovery - PowerShell (via powershell)

Suspicious Domain Admins Group Enumeration via net.exe (via process_creation)

Suspicious Domain Computers Group Enumeration via Net Command (via process_creation)

Suspicious Active Directory Enumeration via ADWS PowerShell Cmdlets via ps_script

Windows File Events: ADExplorer .dat Snapshot Written by ADExp.exe or ADExplorer.exe

Windows: Sysinternals ADExplorer invoked with snapshot flag to create AD database snapshot

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.

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