Suspicious Nltest Domain Trust Enumeration via Command Line

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1482Domain Trust Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects nltest enumerating domain trusts, a discovery step used in the Nitrogen 2.0 campaign to map Active Directory before lateral movement. While administrators occasionally use nltest, its trust enumeration is common in hands-on-keyboard intrusions. Detecting it surfaces reconnaissance ahead of privilege escalation.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1482 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Nltest Domain Trust Enumeration via Command Line

Pivot detection · T1482 · 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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