Suspicious Privileged Group Membership Change via net.exe (via process_creation)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-07-18
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Defense Evasion

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects net.exe adding an account to a privileged local group such as Administrators or Remote Desktop Users. Medusa operators manipulate group membership to escalate privileges and retain access, so an account addition to a sensitive group during an intrusion is a persistence and privilege-escalation signal.

Related detections9 linkedT1098 — drag to rearrange
Malicious Cluster-Admin Role Binding Creation (via audit)
Malicious User Password Change Using Current Hash Password - ChangeNTLM - Mimikatz (via security)
Suspicious Account Password Set to Never Expire. (via security)
Malicious Modification of a Computer Account SPN (via security)
Suspicious Massive Group Membership Changes (via security)
Malicious High Risk Active Directory Group Membership Change (via security)
Malicious Account Marked as Sensitive and Cannot Be Delegated Had Its Protection Removed (via security)
Malicious Host Constrained Delegation Settings Changed for Potential Abuse (Rubeus) - Kerberos Only (via security)
Malicious Host Set with Unconstrained Delegation (via security)
Suspicious Privileged Group Membership Change via net.exe (via process_creation)
Pivot detection · T1098 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.