Malicious Group Policy Preferences Credential Hunting via Findstr by UAT-8837
- Category
- process_creation
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-09-11
- Updated
- 2026-09-11
ATT&CK techniques
Cred AccessRecon
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 use of findstr to recursively search policy files for the cpassword attribute. UAT-8837 harvests Group Policy Preferences passwords which can be decrypted with a publicly known AES key. Locating cpassword values yields reusable domain credentials for privilege escalation and lateral movement.
Reporting behind it
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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