tfMITRE ATT&CK sub-technique

RDP Hijacking T1563.002

sub-technique of T1563 Remote Service Session Hijacking

Tactic: Lateral Movement
Platform: Windows
Version: 1.1
Created: 25 February 2020
Last modified: 24 October 2025

Adversaries may hijack a legitimate user’s remote desktop session to move laterally within an environment. Remote desktop is a common feature in operating systems. It allows a user to log into an interactive session with a system desktop graphical user interface on a remote system. Microsoft refers to its implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) as Remote Desktop Services (RDS).[1]

ReconResource DevInitial AccessExecutionPersistencePriv EscStealthDef ImpairmentCred AccessDiscoveryLateral MoveCollectionC2ExfiltrationImpact

Threat groups45th pct

Threat groups45th percentile · 55% of ATT&CK techniques have more threat groups attributed.

CampaignsNone recorded

CampaignsNone recorded · 54% of ATT&CK techniques have none either.

Tools & malware44th pct

Tools & malware44th percentile · 56% of ATT&CK techniques have more tools implementing them.

Detection rules60th pct

Detection rules60th percentile · 60% of ATT&CK techniques have this many detection rules written or fewer.

RDP Hijacking MITRE reference T1563.002

45th pctamong all ATT&CK techniques for number of groups

1 group has been recorded using this technique. Newest first; each entry carries MITRE’s procedure text and a link to the group’s full record. Click a name to filter the rules below.

AxiomG0001 ↗

Has targeted victims with remote administration tools including RDP.1

created 2017-05-311 referenceaka Group 72

All 1 groups for this technique

Offense vs defense T1563.002

Is defensive coverage keeping up with adversary use? Eight counts, each ranked against all 697 ATT&CK techniques. Attack sits left, defense right, so a shape leaning left means adversaries are better documented here than defenders are equipped. Hover any spoke for its percentile and the share of techniques that have more. The timeline below shows when each side arrived.

How it got here

Range

Adversary activity (campaign spans) over cumulative rule output. Each source is plotted independently from zero, so neither line includes the other. Campaign dates are year-granularity.

Campaigns · 0Sigma rules (cumulative) · 2Splunk ESCU (cumulative) · 2

first rule: 2018 Q1

RDP Hijacking detection strategy DET0588

MITRE names one behaviour worth catching for this technique and breaks it into 1 analytic, one per platform. Each carries the log sources it needs and the fields you tune per environment.

Detection of Remote Service Session Hijacking for RDP.

Enterprise

1 platform

AN1620 · Windows

Detection of suspicious use of tscon.exe or equivalent methods to hijack legitimate RDP sessions. Defenders can observe anomalies such as session reassignments without corresponding authentication, processes spawned in the context of hijacked sessions, or unusual RDP network traffic flows that deviate from expected baselines.

Log sources

The data this analytic draws on. You do not need every component — each one you already collect covers part of it. Each links to its ATT&CK record.

Data component	Name	Channel
Process CreationDC0032	WinEventLog:Sysmon	EventCode=1
Service CreationDC0060	WinEventLog:System	EventCode=7045
Logon Session CreationDC0067	WinEventLog:Security	EventCode=4624, 4648
Network Connection CreationDC0082	WinEventLog:Sysmon	EventCode=3, 22

Tunable fields

MITRE calls these the analytic’s mutable elements: the thresholds and filters you set for your own environment.

Field	What you tune
ExpectedRDPHosts	Whitelist of systems and accounts authorized to use RDP; deviations indicate possible hijacking.
TimeWindow	Time threshold for correlating logon events with session reassignment and process execution.
SessionIDMapping	Environment-specific mapping of user accounts to session IDs; inconsistencies may reveal hijacking.

Tests1Executorscmd 1Need elevation1 of 1Have prerequisites0Have cleanup1Platformswindows

Test

Platform

Executor

Elevation

Prereqs

Cleanup

Ref

RDP hijacking

windows

cmd

Required

—

Yes

RDP hijacking - how to hijack RDS and RemoteApp sessions transparently to move through an organization

Input arguments

Name	Type	Default	Description
Session_ID	string	1337	The ID of the session to which you want to connect
Destination_ID	string	rdp-tcp#55	Connect the session of another user to a different session

Attack command

query user
sc.exe create sesshijack binpath= "cmd.exe /k tscon #{Session_ID} /dest:#{Destination_ID}"
net start sesshijack

Cleanup command

sc.exe delete sesshijack >nul 2>&1

GUID610cc189-cf96-4945-bb19-0f85bee3a054

Tests from Atomic Red Team (MIT licence) · technique definition

RDP Hijacking detections T1563.002

4 rules are mapped to this technique. Parent techniques also include their sub-techniques’ rules. Click a slice or key entry to filter the table.

60th pctamong all ATT&CK techniques for number of rules

Product

Severity

Library

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