This detection rule identifies anomalous remote access patterns that may indicate an adversary attempting to establish persistence or lateral movement within the Azure environment. Proactively hunting for these identifiers allows the SOC team to validate legitimate administrative activity against potential stealthy reconnaissance before escalating low-severity alerts into confirmed incidents.
rule Remote : Family Surtr Variant Remote {
meta:
description = "identifier for remote"
author = "Katie Kleemola"
last_updated = "07-25-2014"
condition:
RSharedStrings and RemoteStrings
}
This YARA rule can be deployed in the following contexts:
Here are 4 specific scenarios where the “identifier for remote” detection rule may generate false positives in an enterprise environment, along with suggested filters or exclusions:
Scheduled Antivirus Definition Updates via WSUS
wuauserv) or a third-party agent like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint initiates a scheduled task to download and install the latest virus definition updates. This process often triggers remote identification events as it queries the central update server (e.g., wsus.contoso.local) to verify patch status before applying changes.C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MsMpEng.exe or C:\Windows\System32\wuauclt.exe when connecting to known internal IP ranges defined in your WSUS infrastructure (e.g., 10.50.10.0/24).Group Policy Object (GPO) Refresh Cycles
BITS) and the Group Policy Client service (gpsvc) on domain-joined workstations perform a standard policy refresh. This involves remote identification lookups against Domain Controllers to fetch updated security policies, software deployment lists, or drive mappings.System account where the source IP belongs to the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) subnet and the destination port is 389 (LDAP) or 445 (SMB). Additionally, filter for the specific event ID associated with GPO processing success.Enterprise Backup Agents Performing Pre-Backup Verification