Malicious PrintNightmare Privilege Escalation via Invoke-Nightmare

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
ps_script
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-05-27
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Defense Evasion

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the Invoke-Nightmare PowerShell cmdlet used to exploit the PrintNightmare vulnerability for local privilege escalation, as observed in SnapMC intrusions before data theft. Invocation of this public exploit tooling reliably indicates an attempt to gain SYSTEM privileges through the print spooler.

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Pivot detection · T1068 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.