Malicious DeceptiveDevelopment Defender Exclusion for Coin Miner via PowerShell

ATT&CK techniques

Impact

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
- T1496Resource Hijacking

What it detects

This rule detects PowerShell adding Microsoft Defender exclusions for cryptomining components used by the DeceptiveDevelopment cluster after a ClickFix fake-interview lure. Attackers whitelist TsunamiClient and XMRig paths so the dropped miners run undetected, and matching this behavior surfaces active defense evasion before mining begins.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious ESXi Management Agent Stop via vpxa init Script (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Firewall Disable via esxcli (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Syslog Redirection to tmp via esxcli

Suspicious Windows Defender Exclusion Enumeration via reg query (via process_creation)

Malicious DeceptiveDevelopment Defender Exclusion for Coin Miner via PowerShell

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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