Malicious Root Certificate Installation via certutil
- Product
- windows
- Category
- process_creation
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-10-09
- Updated
- 2026-10-09
ATT&CK techniques
Defense EvasionRecon
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 certutil adding a certificate to the LocalMachine Root store which BrowserVenom performs so its proxy can transparently intercept TLS traffic. Installing an attacker certificate into the trusted root store undermines HTTPS validation across the whole system. Root store additions by certutil outside managed deployments deserve scrutiny.
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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