Detection rules › Splunk
Domain Trust Discovery Commands - Windows (Windows Event Log)
Adversaries may attempt to gather information on domain trust relationships that may be used to identify lateral movement opportunities in Windows multi-domain/forest environments. This use case detects executions of domain trust discovery commands used with nltest.exe. nltest.exe is not included in the detection to account for instances where nltest.exe has been renamed
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Discovery | T1482 Domain Trust Discovery |
References
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
id: '22209.39127'
title: Domain Trust Discovery Commands - Windows
description: 'Adversaries may attempt to gather information on domain trust relationships
that may be used to identify lateral movement opportunities in Windows multi-domain/forest
environments. This use case detects executions of domain trust discovery commands
used with nltest.exe. nltest.exe is not included in the detection to account for
instances where nltest.exe has been renamed. -- Software Association: Play -- Atomics
T1482 Test #2'
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR
"<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) ("/domain_trusts" OR "/trusted_domains") | table
_time, host, user, process, process_*, parent_* | bin span=1s | stats values(*)
as * by _time, host '
techniques:
- discovery:domain trust discovery
technique_id:
- T1482
data_category:
- Process command-line parameters
- Windows event logs
references:
- https://thedfirreport.com/2023/06/12/a-truly-graceful-wipe-out/
- https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/master/atomics/T1482/T1482.md#atomic-test-2---windows---discover-domain-trusts-with-nltest
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR "<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) ("/domain_trusts" OR "/trusted_domains")
Stage 2: table
| table _time, host, user, process, process_*, parent_*
Stage 3: bucket
| bin span=1s
Stage 4: stats
| stats values(*) as * by _time, host
Indicators
Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
EventCode | eq |
|
Search terms
Bare-string tokens in the SPL search body. Splunk matches each token against _raw (the untyped raw event text) anywhere it appears, not against a specific field. These don't surface in the Indicators table because they aren't predicates on a known field.
| Stage | Term |
|---|---|
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | "<EventID>4688<" |
| 1 | "/domain_trusts" |
| 1 | "/trusted_domains" |