Malicious ABYSSWORKER EDR-Killer Driver Load via smuol.sys

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1014Rootkit
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the load of the smuol.sys kernel driver associated with the ABYSSWORKER EDR-killer. The driver masquerades as a legitimate CrowdStrike component and exposes IOCTL handlers used to terminate or blind endpoint security products. Loading this driver indicates an attacker attempting to disable defenses to enable further intrusion activity.

Reporting behind it

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Malicious ABYSSWORKER EDR-Killer Driver Load via smuol.sys

Pivot detection · T1685 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

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