Malicious Defender Disable And Executable Exclusion Via Registry

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 registry modifications that disable Microsoft Defender or add a broad executable-file exclusion. BlackByte tampered with Defender policy keys to disable protection and exclude all .exe files before deploying its ransomware. Disabling antivirus and whitelisting entire file types via the registry is a defense-evasion step that clears the way for payload execution.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Zemana Vulnerable Driver Load for EDR Termination (via image_load)

Suspicious EDRKillShifter Vulnerable Driver Load from User Temp Directory (via image_load)

Malicious AuKill EDR Killer Kernel Driver Load via Process Explorer Driver (via image_load)

Malicious FIN7 AvNeutralizer EDR Killer Execution via Masqueraded Binary (via process_creation)

Suspicious Process Explorer Kernel Driver Dropped as PED.sys via File Creation (via file_event)

Malicious Windows Defender Tampering via Set-MpPreference and Add-MpPreference (via ps_script)

Suspicious PowerShell AMSI Bypass via 8220 Gang Hadooken Loader

Malicious Microsoft Defender Services Stopped via sc.exe

Suspicious Microsoft Defender Definitions Removed via MpCmdRun

Malicious Defender Disable And Executable Exclusion Via Registry

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.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →