Suspicious Local Account Creation via Net Command

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 local user account creation through the net utility, a living-off-the-land technique used to establish persistence, including accounts masquerading as WDAGUtilityAccount or ASP.NET service identities. Attackers add accounts to retain access after initial compromise. Unexpected account creation on endpoints is a common persistence and privilege staging step.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1136.001 — drag to rearrange

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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 Local Account Creation via Net Command

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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