ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Permission Groups Discovery: Domain Groups T1069.002

Adversaries may attempt to find domain-level groups and permission settings. The knowledge of domain-level permission groups can help adversaries determine which groups exist and which users belong to a particular group. Adversaries may use this information to determine which users have elevated permissions, such as domain administrators.

Events covered

10 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon3Network connection
Sysmon11FileCreate
Security-Auditing4661A handle to an object was requested.
Security-Auditing4662An operation was performed on an object.
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.
Defender-DeviceProcessEvents9001000Process activity (any)
LDAP-Client30
PowerShell4103Payload Context: ContextInfo User Data: UserData.
PowerShell4104Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal).

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 24 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.

Fields filtered most (22 distinct)

The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.

FieldRulesHowSample values
CommandLine8match 8snapshot, users_noexpire, -subnets -f, domainlist, args
Image7ends_with 6, match 1\ADExplorer64.exe, \ADExp.exe, \ADExplorer64a.exe, \svchost.exe, \SharpHound.exe
ScriptBlockText7eq 5, match 2, in 1-Filter, Get-AdGroup , Invoke-SauronEye, Get-FoxDump, Invoke-KrbRelay
OriginalFileName4eq 4AdExp, SharpView.exe, AdFind.exe
EventID4eq 44104
Product3eq 2, match 1Sysinternals ADExplorer, SharpHound
Description3eq 2, match 1Active Directory Editor, SharpHound
TargetFilename2ends_with 2, starts_with 1.dat, _computers.json, _ous.json, C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.
file_name2in 2"*-azapplicationadmins.json", "*-azcloudappadmins.json", "*-azurecollection.zip", "*_groups.json", "*_users.json"
AccessMaskDescription1eq 1Read Property
FileName1eq 1AdFind.exe
SHA2561eq 1c92c158d7c37fea795114fa6491fe5f145ad2f8c08776b18ae79db811e8e36a3
InitiatingProcessFileName1eq 1parentProcesses
Company1match 1evil corp, SpecterOps
Payload1match 1Get-MachineAccountCreator, Invoke-SauronEye, Get-FoxDump

Top indicator values (818 distinct)

Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
EventIDeq41044108
Imageends_with\ADExp.exe33
Imageends_with\ADExplorer64.exe36
Imageends_with\ADExplorer.exe36
Imageends_with\ADExplorer64a.exe34
ProducteqSysinternals ADExplorer22
OriginalFileNameeqAdExp22
CommandLinematchsnapshot23
DescriptioneqActive Directory Editor22
CommandLinematchInvoke-ACLScanner22
CommandLinematchFind-GPOLocation22
CommandLinematchname="Domain Admins"22
CommandLinematchcomputer_pwdnotreqd22
CommandLinematchdomainncs22
CommandLinematchdcmodes22
CommandLinematch-subnets -f22
CommandLinematchcomputers_pwdnotreqd22
CommandLinematchadinfo22
CommandLinematchdompol22
CommandLinematchsubnetdmp22

Common exclusions (1 distinct)

Field/operator/value combinations that rules under this technique routinely exclude (top-level not() clauses). These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
SubjectUserSideqS-1-5-181

Rules under this technique

Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.

Sigma 14 rules

Elastic 1 rule

Splunk 8 rules

Kusto Query Language 1 rule