Firewall Configuration Discovery Via Netsh.EXE

Status: test
Severity: low
Log source: category process_creation, product windows
Author: frack113, Christopher Peacock '@securepeacock', SCYTHE '@scythe_io'
Source: github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Adversaries may look for details about the network configuration and settings of systems they access or through information discovery of remote systems

Known false positives

Administrative activity

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Discovery	`T1016` System Network Configuration Discovery

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 1: Process creation

Rule body

title: Firewall Configuration Discovery Via Netsh.EXE
id: 0e4164da-94bc-450d-a7be-a4b176179f1f
status: test
description: Adversaries may look for details about the network configuration and settings of systems they access or through information discovery of remote systems
references:
    - https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/f339e7da7d05f6057fdfcdd3742bfcf365fee2a9/atomics/T1016/T1016.md#atomic-test-2---list-windows-firewall-rules
    - https://ss64.com/nt/netsh.html
author: frack113, Christopher Peacock '@securepeacock', SCYTHE '@scythe_io'
date: 2021-12-07
modified: 2025-10-18
tags:
    - attack.discovery
    - attack.t1016
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection_img:
        - Image|endswith: '\netsh.exe'
        - OriginalFileName: 'netsh.exe'
    selection_cli:
        CommandLine|contains|all:
            - 'netsh'
            - 'show '
            - 'firewall '
        CommandLine|contains:
            - 'config '
            - 'state '
            - 'rule '
            - 'name=all'
    condition: all of selection_*
falsepositives:
    - Administrative activity
level: low

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

all of selection_*

Stage 1: `selection_img`

selection_img:
    - Image|endswith: '\netsh.exe'
    - OriginalFileName: 'netsh.exe'

Stage 2: `selection_cli`

selection_cli:
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'netsh'
        - 'show '
        - 'firewall '
    CommandLine|contains:
        - 'config '
        - 'state '
        - 'rule '
        - 'name=all'

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`CommandLine`	match	`config` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `firewall` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `name=all` `netsh` corpus 9 (sigma 9) `rule` `show` `state`	`field:"CommandLine" kind:match`
`Image`	ends_with	`\netsh.exe` corpus 28 (sigma 28)	`field:"Image" kind:ends_with value:"\netsh.exe"`
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`netsh.exe` corpus 23 (sigma 14, splunk 7, elastic 2)	`field:"OriginalFileName" kind:eq value:"netsh.exe"`