Create Account: Domain Account T1136.002
Tactic: Persistence
Adversaries may create a domain account to maintain access to victim systems. Domain accounts are those managed by Active Directory Domain Services where access and permissions are configured across systems and services that are part of that domain. Domain accounts can cover user, administrator, and service accounts. With a sufficient level of access, the net user /add /domain command can be used to create a domain account.
Events covered
20 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 18 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (21 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (78 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (5 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 4 rules
- Manipulation of User Computer or Group Security Principals Across AD
- PSEXEC Remote Execution File Artefact
- Suspicious Windows ANONYMOUS LOGON Local Account Created
- User creation via commandline
Elastic 2 rules
Splunk 11 rules
- Create_Add Local_Domain User (EDR)
- Create_Add Local_Domain User (Sysmon)
- Create_Add Local_Domain User (Windows Event Log)
- User_Domain Enumeration Tool - Windows (PowerShell)
- User_Domain Enumeration Tool - Windows (Sysmon)
- User_Domain Enumeration Tool - Windows (Windows Event Log)
- Windows Computer Account Changed to Domain Controller
- Windows ESX Admins Group Creation Security Event
- Windows ESX Admins Group Creation via Net
- Windows ESX Admins Group Creation via PowerShell
- Windows Privileged Group Modification