Sigma rule: Potential Exploitation of CVE-2024-37085 - Suspicious ESX Admins Group Activity

A detection rule from the SigmaHQ repository, shown as its author published it. Dataset version ref-3fb6ae49a21d, updated 2024-07-30T00:00:00.000Z.

Rule

Title: Potential Exploitation of CVE-2024-37085 - Suspicious ESX Admins Group Activity
Status: test
Level: high
Author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
Date: 2024-07-30
File: rules-emerging-threats/2024/Exploits/CVE-2024-37085/win_security_exploit_cve_2024_37085_esxi_admins_group.yml
Commit: ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects any creation or modification to a windows domain group with the name "ESX Admins".
This could indicates a potential exploitation attempt of CVE-2024-37085, which allows an attacker to elevate their privileges to full administrative access on an domain-joined ESXi hypervisor.
VMware ESXi hypervisors joined to an Active Directory domain consider any member of a domain group named "ESX Admins" to have full administrative access by default.

Log source

product: windows
service: security

Detection

selection:
    EventID:
        - 4727
        - 4728
        - 4731
        - 4737
        - 4754
        - 4755
        - 4756
keyword_group:
    - 'ESX Admins'
condition: selection and keyword_group

False positives (as the rule lists them)

Unknown

CVEs this rule names

CVE-2024-37085

References

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/07/29/ransomware-operators-exploit-esxi-hypervisor-vulnerability-for-mass-encryption/

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules-emerging-threats/2024/Exploits/CVE-2024-37085/win_security_exploit_cve_2024_37085_esxi_admins_group.yml

Sources and licences

SigmaHQ
"Potential Exploitation of CVE-2024-37085 - Suspicious ESX Admins Group Activity" by Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems) (SigmaHQ). Rule: https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules-emerging-threats/2024/Exploits/CVE-2024-37085/win_security_exploit_cve_2024_37085_esxi_admins_group.yml.
Licensed under the Detection Rule License (DRL) 1.1: https://github.com/SigmaHQ/Detection-Rule-License
Detection Rule License (DRL) 1.1

Cite this page

Dragons Eye Ransomware Tracker, "Sigma rule: Potential Exploitation of CVE-2024-37085 - Suspicious ESX Admins Group Activity",
entity page, dataset version ref-3fb6ae49a21d, updated 2024-07-30T00:00:00.000Z,
https://ransomware-tracker.com/detections/sigma/47a1658b-67a4-48e2-8ab1-c10437fc0148 (accessed 2026-11-03).
Underlying source: SigmaHQ rule 47a1658b-67a4-48e2-8ab1-c10437fc0148, commit ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84.

Pages change. The dataset version identifies the data, but no archive of old versions is kept, so this citation cannot be replayed later.