Suspicious Guest Account Enablement via net user for Privilege Abuse

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1136.001Local Account
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the built in guest account being activated through net user which the Gh0stGambit dropper abused for elevation. Enabling and repurposing the guest account provides a low visibility foothold for continued access. Activation of this normally disabled account is a strong sign of account manipulation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1136.001 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Local Administrator Account Creation via Net Command via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Suspicious Rogue Machine Account Creation via Powermad New-MachineAccount

Malicious Local Administrator Account Added via net localgroup (via process_creation)

Malicious Switch User to Rogue Root-Equivalent Account troot (via process_creation)

Malicious Rogue F5 BIG-IP Administrator Account Creation via tmsh (via process_creation)

Suspicious Hidden Local Account Creation SqlDbAdmin via Process Creation

PowerShell Local Account Creation With Self-Deleting Script

Suspicious Creation of ctxsvc Local Account via net Command

Suspicious Local Administrator Account Addition via net localgroup

Suspicious Guest Account Enablement via net user for Privilege Abuse

Pivot detection · T1136.001 · 9 related

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

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