Suspicious Enabling of Network Discovery Firewall Rules via PowerShell

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-07-23
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects enabling of the Network Discovery firewall rule group via PowerShell, the step The Gentlemen ransomware took to widen host visibility for lateral movement. Programmatically enabling network discovery firewall rules during an intrusion facilitates spread across the environment.

Related detections9 linkedT1135 — drag to rearrange
Malicious Network Share Discovery And/or Connection via Commandline (via process_creation)
NetScan Share Enumeration Write Access Check
Suspicious Network Share Enumeration via SharpShares
Suspicious SharpShares Network Share Enumeration Tool Execution
SharpHound Enumeration via SMB Named Pipes (via security)
Uncommon Network Share Discovery via Net View (via process_creation)
Windows: Explorer opened from cmd.exe/powershell using shell:MyComputerFolder shortcut
Windows Process Creation: Advanced Port Scanner PUA Execution via /portable /lng
Windows Process Creation: SharpView.exe with Recon/Domain Discovery Cmdlets
Suspicious Enabling of Network Discovery Firewall Rules via PowerShell
Pivot detection · T1135 · 9 related

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