Suspicious Domain Trust Discovery via Nltest via Process Creation (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1482Domain Trust Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects nltest.exe enumerating domain trust relationships, the domain reconnaissance SocGholish runs to map an environment per Red Canary. Adversaries use domain trust discovery to plan lateral movement across forests, and nltest /domain_trusts from a non-administrative context is a common early sign of that planning.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1482 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Discovery Command Spawned by Java Process

Uncommon Domain Trust Discovery via Nltest (via process_creation)

Suspicious SOAPHound Tautological LDAP Filter Enumeration

Suspicious Domain Trust Enumeration via Nltest

Suspicious Domain Controller and Trust Enumeration via Nltest

Suspicious Domain Trust Discovery via Nltest

Suspicious Domain Trust Discovery via Nltest via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1482 · 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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