Malicious Microsoft Defender Disable via Registry by Key Group

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1112Modify Registry
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1112Modify Registry
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects registry modifications that disable Microsoft Defender antispyware or real-time monitoring, a tamper action Key Group ransomware uses to blind endpoint protection before encryption. Setting these policy values to enabled-disable is a hallmark of ransomware pre-encryption defense evasion.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious SmartScreen Disable via Registry Modification via registry_set

Malicious Windows Defender Service Disable via Registry

Malicious Microsoft Defender Tamper via Registry Modification

Malicious Defender Real-Time Monitoring Disable via Registry

Suspicious HrServ Registry Command Channel under IdentityStore RemoteFile (via registry_set)

Suspicious Process Made Critical via RtlSetProcessIsCritical (via ps_script)

Malicious Defender Exclusion Added for User Profile Path

Suspicious Defender Protection Disabled via Set-MpPreference

Suspicious PowerShell Decoding Base64 Payload Stored in Registry

Malicious Microsoft Defender Disable via Registry by Key Group

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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