Malicious Payload Download and Execution via certutil urlcache (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1105Ingress Tool Transfer
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects certutil being used with the urlcache option to download a remote executable to disk, a living off the land technique used by a ransomware actor after exploiting an unsupported ColdFusion server to fetch and launch beacon payloads into the Windows temp directory. Legitimate use of certutil to download arbitrary executables over HTTP is rare.

Reporting behind it

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Malicious Payload Download and Execution via certutil urlcache (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1105 · 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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