Suspicious Rogue Machine Account Creation via Powermad New-MachineAccount

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
ps_script
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-16
Updated
2026-10-16

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Priv Esc

  6. Defense Evasion

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects use of the Powermad New-MachineAccount cmdlet to create a rogue computer account in Active Directory, the first step of a resource-based constrained delegation attack that leads to privilege escalation. Creation of attacker-controlled machine accounts through this tooling is a strong indicator of an RBCD abuse chain.

Related detections9 linkedT1136.001 — drag to rearrange
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PowerShell Local Account Creation With Self-Deleting Script
Suspicious Creation of ctxsvc Local Account via net Command
Suspicious Local Administrator Account Addition via net localgroup
Suspicious Local Account Creation of DefaultService via Net User
Malicious Masquerading Local Account WDAGUtilltyAccount Created via net user
Suspicious Rogue Machine Account Creation via Powermad New-MachineAccount
Pivot detection · T1136.001 · 9 related

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