huntrule

Windows whoami.exe Group Membership Reconnaissance via /groups Flag

Flags whoami.exe runs that use the /groups option to enumerate current user group memberships and SIDs.

FreeReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems) (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published
2023-02-28
Updated
2026-07-30
AnalysisDetection

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

  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. C2

  13. Exfiltration

  14. Impact

What it detects

This rule identifies execution of whoami.exe where the command line includes the /groups flag (including common variations like -groups). Attackers and administrators can use this to quickly enumerate the current user’s group memberships, including account type, SIDs, and related attributes. It relies on Windows process creation telemetry capturing the image name and command-line arguments.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1033 — drag to rearrange
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Suspicious Host Reconnaissance Command Chain via cmd
Malicious Child Process Spawned From n8n Node Process
Suspicious Credential Enumeration via cmdkey List
Suspicious IIS Worker Process Spawning Whoami Reconnaissance
Suspicious Whoami Execution With Output Redirected to a File (via process_creation)
Possible Logged-On Session Discovery via Quser or Qwinsta (via process_creation)
Windows whoami.exe Group Membership Reconnaissance via /groups Flag
Pivot detection · T1033 · 9 related

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