Malicious BYOVD ThrottleStop Vulnerable Driver Load (via image_load)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
image_load
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-05-26
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

  14. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects loading of the ThrottleStop vulnerable driver including the renamed ThrottleBlood.sys variant used in a Bring Your Own Vulnerable Driver attack to terminate security products. The driver exposes a device that lets an unprivileged process kill protected antivirus and EDR processes such as MsMpEng and SentinelAgent. Loading this kernel driver on a server or workstation with no ThrottleStop application present is highly suspicious.

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Malicious BYOVD ThrottleStop Vulnerable Driver Load (via image_load)
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.