Suspicious RDP Enablement via netsh Firewall Rule

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

ATT&CK techniques

Lateral Movement
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects use of netsh to open the firewall for Remote Desktop which Black Basta operators run to enable lateral movement into a compromised environment. Enabling RDP through the command line on a host that did not previously allow it is a common precursor to hands on keyboard activity.

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