Malicious Defender Tampering via Registry DisableRealtimeMonitoring

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 reg.exe writing the DisableRealtimeMonitoring or DisableAntiSpyware values to disable Microsoft Defender protections as commonly seen in ransomware pre encryption staging. Attackers turn off real time scanning so their tooling and payloads can run undetected.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious ESXi execInstalledOnly Disabled via esxcli During Ransomware

Suspicious SmartScreen Disable via Registry Modification via registry_set

Malicious Microsoft Defender Disable via Registry by Key Group

Suspicious Process Made Critical via RtlSetProcessIsCritical (via ps_script)

Malicious Defender Exclusion Added for User Profile Path

Suspicious Defender Protection Disabled via Set-MpPreference

Malicious Windows Defender Tampering via Command Line

Suspicious macOS SIP Disable via csrutil (via process_creation)

Malicious Firewall Disable via netsh by Key Group Ransomware

Malicious Defender Tampering via Registry DisableRealtimeMonitoring

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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