Detection rules › Splunk

ntds.dit Command Line (Sysmon)

Group by
_time, host
Source
github.com/anvilogic-forge/armory

Adversaries may attempt to access or create a copy of the Active Directory domain database in order to steal credential information, as well as obtain other information about domain members such as devices, users, and access rights. This use case specifically looks for command line argument executions with ntds.dit

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Credential Access

References

Telemetry coverage

ProviderRecord / event type
SysmonEvent ID 1: Process creation

Rule body

id: '20543.36404'
title: ntds.dit Command Line
description: 'Adversaries may attempt to access or create a copy of the Active Directory
  domain database in order to steal credential information, as well as obtain other
  information about domain members such as devices, users, and access rights. This
  use case specifically looks for command line argument executions with ntds.dit.
  -- Threat Actor Association: Mustang Panda (aka. Stately Taurus//Earth Preta/BRONZE
  PRESIDENT/TA416/RedDelta), Volt Typhoon - Software Association: Akira -- Atomics
  T1003.003 Test #2 Atomics T1003.003 Test #3 Atomics T1003.003 Test #6'
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "EventID>1<")
  "ntds.dit" | regex process="(?i)(ntds\.dit)" | table _time, host, user parent_*,
  process, process_*, signature_id | bin span=1s | stats values(*) as * by _time,
  host '
techniques:
- credential-access:os credential dumping:ntds
technique_id:
- T1003.003
data_category:
- Windows Sysmon
- Process command-line parameters
references:
- https://www.ired.team/offensive-security/credential-access-and-credential-dumping/ntds.dit-enumeration

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "EventID>1<") "ntds.dit"

Stage 2: regex

| regex process="(?i)(ntds\.dit)"

Stage 3: table

| table _time, host, user parent_*, process, process_*, signature_id

Stage 4: bucket

| bin span=1s

Stage 5: stats

| stats values(*) as * by _time, host

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

FieldKindValuesSearch
EventCodeeq
  • 1 corpus 241 (splunk 225, kusto 15, elastic 1)
field:"EventID" kind:eq value:"1"
processregex_match
  • "(?i)(ntds.dit)"
field:"CommandLine" kind:regex_match

Search terms

These SPL tokens match against raw event text.

StageTerm
1"EventID>1<"
1"ntds.dit"