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ATT&CK techniqueLateral Movement

T1021.002 SMB/Windows Admin Shares

Lateral MovementEnterpriseSub-technique

As of 2026-10-05, T1021.002 (SMB/Windows Admin Shares) appears in 90 tracked threats, first reported 2026-02-02 and most recently 2026-10-03, with linked actors including Cavern Manticore, Qilin, The Gentlemen; it most often appears alongside T1059.001 (PowerShell).

Tracked threats
9032 critical, 53 high, 5 medium
First seen
2026-02-02
Last seen
2026-10-03
Threat actors
57In the threats using it
Detection rules
202Blue tier and above

Data as of:

Activity timeline

T1021.002 first appeared in tracked threats on and was most recently reported on . The busiest month was 2026-07 with 23 reports, and 90 of the 90 threats were reported in the twelve months to 2026-10.

How adversaries use it

T1021.002 SMB/Windows Admin Shares is catalogued by MITRE ATT&CK under the Lateral Movement tactic in the Enterprise matrix, as a sub-technique of T1021 Remote Services. Threadlinqs maps 90 of 2623 tracked threats (3.4%) to it; by severity that is 32 critical, 53 high, 5 medium.

Threats that use T1021.002 most often also use T1059.001 PowerShell (56 threats), T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application (50 threats), T1685 Disable or Modify Tools (48 threats), T1071.001 Web Protocols (46 threats), T1027 Obfuscated Files or Information (45 threats). These are the techniques an intrusion set tends to chain with it, so they are the natural next places to look when it is observed.

57 tracked threat actors appear in the threats that use T1021.002; the most frequent are Cavern Manticore (4), Qilin (4), The Gentlemen (4), VECT (4), GhostEmperor (3).

Mitigations

MITRE ATT&CK lists 4 mitigations for T1021.002.

Data sources

Telemetry that can reveal T1021.002, per MITRE ATT&CK.

  • Command — Command Execution
  • Logon Session — Logon Session Creation
  • Network Share — Network Share Access
  • Network Traffic — Network Connection Creation, Network Traffic Flow
  • Process — Process Creation

Threat actors using it

Tracked threats

The 30 most recent of 90 tracked threats that use T1021.002.

Detection coverage

Threadlinqs maintains 202 detection rules mapped to T1021.002 (SPL 60, KQL 79, Sigma 59, other 4). Rule content is available to Blue tier accounts and above; this page shows counts only.

202 detection rules (SPL/KQL/Sigma) · Blue and above. Compare plans

Parent technique

T1021 Remote Services — 364 tracked threats at the technique level.