Suspicious Local Account Creation and Privileged Group Addition via Net.EXE (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1098Account Manipulation
- T1136.001Local Account
Priv Esc
- T1098Account Manipulation
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation of a local user account or addition of an account to a privileged local group through net.exe or net1.exe. Account manipulation for persistence and privilege escalation features in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report, letting adversaries establish durable, legitimate-looking access. Detecting local account and administrators-group changes at the command line surfaces backdoor-account activity.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1098 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Massive Group Membership Changes (via security)

Suspicious Local Account Creation and Privileged Group Addition via Net.EXE (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1098 · 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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