Enumerating Domain Trusts via NLTEST.EXE

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Identifies the use of nltest.exe for domain trust discovery purposes. Adversaries may use this command-line utility to enumerate domain trusts and gain insight into trust relationships, as well as the state of Domain Controller (DC) replication in a Microsoft Windows NT Domain.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

• winlogbeat-*
• logs-endpoint.events.*
• logs-windows.*

Severity: low

Risk score: 23

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/it-pro/windows-server-2012-r2-and-2012/cc731935(v=ws.11
• https://redcanary.com/blog/how-one-hospital-thwarted-a-ryuk-ransomware-outbreak/

Tags:

• Elastic
• Host
• Windows
• Threat Detection
• Discovery

Version: 2

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
    process.name : "nltest.exe" and process.args : (
        "/DCLIST:*", "/DCNAME:*", "/DSGET*",
        "/LSAQUERYFTI:*", "/PARENTDOMAIN",
        "/DOMAIN_TRUSTS", "/BDC_QUERY:*")

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• Tactic:

  • Name: Discovery
  • ID: TA0007
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0007/

• Technique:

  • Name: Domain Trust Discovery
  • ID: T1482
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1482/