Malicious Defender Exclusion Added for User Profile Path

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 PowerShell using Add-MpPreference to add a Microsoft Defender exclusion covering the user profile directory which BrowserVenom uses to shield its staged payload from scanning. Excluding a broad writable path like the user profile is a common evasion before dropping the next stage. This weakening of Defender coverage is rarely legitimate on endpoints.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious macOS SIP Disable via csrutil (via process_creation)

Malicious Firewall Disable via netsh by Key Group Ransomware

Malicious Defender Real-Time Monitoring Disabled via Process Creation

Malicious Windows Defender Exclusion Added via Command Line

Suspicious Exchange IIS Worker Loading GhostContainer Module (via image_load)

Malicious Defender Exclusion Added for User Profile Path

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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