Suspicious netsh Port Proxy Configuration for Covert Tunneling

ATT&CK techniques

C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1090.001Internal Proxy
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects configuration of a netsh portproxy rule used by a Russian APT during the Nearest Neighbor Attack to relay traffic and pivot between networks. Port proxies forward connections to hide lateral movement paths. This technique enables covert access through compromised hosts.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1090.001 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious Volt Typhoon Port Proxy Configuration via Netsh (via process_creation)

Malicious Port Forwarding Tunnel via Netsh Portproxy (via process_creation)

Windows Execution of cloudflared for Cloudflare Try/Quick Tunnel Ad-hoc Tunneling

Suspicious netsh Port Proxy Configuration for Covert Tunneling

Pivot detection · T1090.001 · 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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