Malicious Root Certificate Installed via certutil addstore for AiTM Interception

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-14
Updated
2026-10-14

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → Collection
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. C2

  10. Exfiltration

  11. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects certutil.exe adding a certificate to the root or CA store using the addstore and Enterprise options. Microsoft observed Secret Blizzard installing a rogue root certificate to enable adversary-in-the-middle interception of diplomat traffic. Trusting an attacker root certificate allows silent TLS decryption, so this command reveals the interception setup.

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Pivot detection · T1557 · 9 related

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