Suspicious Port Forwarding via Netsh PortProxy Linked to Chinese APT Techniques

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-03
Updated
2026-10-03

ATT&CK techniques

C2
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects netsh configuring an interface portproxy rule, a traffic-relay technique used in trending Chinese APT operations to pivot through compromised hosts. Attackers add portproxy forwarding to tunnel access to internal systems, so netsh portproxy additions are a meaningful internal proxy and pivot indicator.

Related detections9 linkedT1090.001 — drag to rearrange
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Malicious Volt Typhoon Port Proxy Configuration via Netsh (via process_creation)
Suspicious netsh Port Proxy Configuration for Covert Tunneling
Malicious Port Forwarding Tunnel via Netsh Portproxy (via process_creation)
Windows Execution of cloudflared for Cloudflare Try/Quick Tunnel Ad-hoc Tunneling
Windows Process Execution of Renamed cloudflared.exe with Tunnel/Run Command Arguments
Windows execution of cloudflared.exe from a non-default directory
Suspicious Port Forwarding via Netsh PortProxy Linked to Chinese APT Techniques
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.