Suspicious netsh Firewall Rule Masquerading as SSTP HTTP

ATT&CK techniques

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects netsh adding a firewall rule named after the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol, the masquerade Prometei used to allow its sqhost.exe binary through the firewall. The botnet created an inbound allow rule with an SSTP-themed name to blend its C2 access into normal-looking firewall configuration. This masqueraded rule name combined with netsh firewall additions indicates malicious network enabling.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1686 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Firewall Allow Rule for TightVNC Server via netsh (via process_creation)

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Suspicious netsh Firewall Rule Masquerading as SSTP HTTP

Pivot detection · T1686 · 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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