Elastic Security Detection Rules

Enumerating Domain Trusts via NLTEST.EXE

Last updated 9 days ago on 2025-02-22
Created 3 years ago on 2022-05-31

About

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.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: DiscoveryData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: Windows Security Event LogsData Source: Microsoft Defender for EndpointData Source: CrowdstrikeData Source: SysmonLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

Discovery (TA0007)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Remote System Discovery (T1018)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Domain Trust Discovery (T1482)(opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
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.
License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
endgame-*logs-crowdstrike.fdr*logs-endpoint.events.process-*logs-m365_defender.event-*logs-system.security*logs-windows.forwarded*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*winlogbeat-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

system(opens in a new tab or window)

m365_defender(opens in a new tab or window)

crowdstrike(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
    process.name : "nltest.exe" and process.args : (
        "/DCLIST:*", "/DCNAME:*", "/DSGET*",
        "/LSAQUERYFTI:*", "/PARENTDOMAIN",
        "/DOMAIN_TRUSTS", "/BDC_QUERY:*"
        ) and 
not process.parent.name : "PDQInventoryScanner.exe" and
not (
  user.id in ("S-1-5-18", "S-1-5-19", "S-1-5-20") and
  /* Don't apply the user.id exclusion to Sysmon for compatibility */
  not event.dataset : ("windows.sysmon_operational", "windows.sysmon")
)

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Enumerating Domain Trusts via NLTEST.EXE in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).