Suspicious RdpBus Registry Symbolic Link Creation for Privilege Escalation

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1068Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects creation or modification of an RdpBus registry key used as a symbolic link, matching the SYSTEM privilege-escalation technique in the CitrixBleed 2 to DragonForce ransomware intrusion. Adversaries plant a REG_LINK RdpBus entry pointing at an attacker-controlled service key and then start a service to execute code as SYSTEM. This registry manipulation is a privilege-escalation indicator on NetScaler and Citrix hosts.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1068 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Vulnerable Driver Mapping via KDU

Malicious Vulnerable Driver Load via TfSysMon.sys BYOVD (via driver_load)

Malicious Vulnerable Driver Load by GentleKiller BYOVD EDR Killer

Malicious JuicyPotatoNG Privilege Escalation Tool Execution from Public Directory (via process_creation)

Malicious Print Spooler Child Process Execution via PrintNightmare (via process_creation)

Suspicious Modification of etc passwd Following Linux Kernel Exploit

Possible AF_ALG Privilege Escalation via algif_aead Module Load

Malicious JuicyPotato Privilege Escalation Execution (UAT-7237)

Suspicious Dell ControlVault DLL Load by Unexpected Process (ReVault)

Suspicious RdpBus Registry Symbolic Link Creation for Privilege Escalation

Pivot detection · T1068 · 9 related

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

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →