Malicious Libcurl DLL Side-Loading by Paint Backdoor (via image_load)

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1574.001DLL
Persistence
- T1574.001DLL
Priv Esc
- T1574.001DLL
Defense Evasion
- T1574.001DLL
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the BRUSHWORM paint.exe backdoor side-loading a malicious libcurl.dll from a non-standard directory. Observed in Elastic Security Labs analysis where DLL search order hijacking of libcurl.dll executes attacker code under a benign-looking process against financial services.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1574.001 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious Libcurl DLL Side-Loading by Paint Backdoor (via image_load)

Pivot detection · T1574.001 · 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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