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Enumerating Domain Trusts via NLTEST.EXE

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…

Description

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.

Detection logic

Its licence does not clear it for publishing here

Sunturai publishes a detection's own text where the licence it arrived under has been reviewed and permits it, and Elastic License 2.0 has not. The query as its source wrote it, its canonical form and the hash that pins this revision are in the workspace record.

Detection requirements

Platform
ESXiLinuxmacOSNetwork DevicesWindows

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the 2 ATT&CK techniques it maps to.

Log source category
event_index

Known benign triggers

  • Domain administrators may use this command-line utility for legitimate information gathering purposes, but it is not common for environments with Windows Server 2012 and newer.

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