Malicious DLL Execution With Non Standard Extension via rundll32

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1036Masquerading
- T1218.011Rundll32
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects rundll32.exe loading a library renamed with a .db extension which the DPRK aligned Stressed Pungsan npm campaign uses to masquerade its downloaded payload package.db and execute an exported function while evading extension based detection.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1218.011 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Billbug Loader Artifacts in Windows Temp Directory

Malicious Scheduled Task Masquerading as Windows Defender Sync via schtasks (via process_creation)

Malicious Startup Persistence via WindowsDefenderSync Shortcut (via file_event)

Malicious DLL Execution With Non Standard Extension via rundll32

Pivot detection · T1218.011 · 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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