Malicious Defender Behavior Monitoring Disable via Set-MpPreference

ATT&CK techniques

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

What it detects

This rule detects commands that disable Microsoft Defender behavior monitoring through Set-MpPreference or the MpPreference registry path. A fake KMSPico installer delivering Vidar Stealer used a javaw hosted stage to switch off behavior monitoring before running AutoIt. Turning off behavior monitoring lets the loader execute without real-time detection.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

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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 Windows Defender Exclusion Added via PowerShell (via process_creation)

Malicious BYOVD EDR Kill via Renamed GMER Driver by Agonizing Serpens

Malicious Defender Behavior Monitoring Disable via Set-MpPreference

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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