Suspicious Enabling of Remote Desktop via fDenyTSConnections (via registry_set)

ATT&CK techniques

Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.001Remote Desktop Protocol
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the fDenyTSConnections value being set to zero, which enables inbound Remote Desktop on a host, a change attackers make to establish interactive remote access for lateral movement. Enabling RDP through the registry is a lateral-movement enablement technique in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report. Detecting this modification surfaces remote-access being opened on the endpoint.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1021.001 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious RDP Connection File Opened From Download or Mail Directory via Process Creation

Suspicious Firewall Rule Allowing SSH via New-NetFirewallRule During Ransomware

Malicious RDP Tunneling via ngrok (via process_creation)

Suspicious Remote Desktop Enablement via Registry By Ransomware

Suspicious Remote Desktop Enablement via netsh Firewall Rule (via process_creation)

Suspicious RDP Enablement via netsh Firewall Rule

Suspicious RDP Enablement via fDenyTSConnections Registry Modification

Suspicious RDP Enablement via fDenyTSConnections Registry Modification [Huntress] #2

Suspicious Firewall Rule Added to Open RDP Port 3389 via netsh

Suspicious Enabling of Remote Desktop via fDenyTSConnections (via registry_set)

Pivot detection · T1021.001 · 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 →