Malicious SAM and SYSTEM Hive Dump via reg save

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1003.002Security Account Manager
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects reg.exe saving the SAM or SYSTEM registry hives to disk which the Librarian Ghouls APT exports to a staging folder to harvest local credentials offline. Dumping these hives enables offline password and secret extraction after gaining local admin. Reg save of security hives is rarely part of legitimate administration.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1003.002 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Registry Hive Dump of SAM or SYSTEM via Reg Save (via process_creation)

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Malicious Secretdump Password Dumping via SMB Admin Share (via security)

Malicious Registry Hive Dump of SAM and SYSTEM via Reg Save (via process_creation)

Suspicious SAM Registry Hive Dump to Windows Temp by BianLian

Malicious SAM and SYSTEM Hive Dump via reg save (via process_creation)

Malicious Mimikatz Credential Access Module Invocation

Malicious SYSTEM Registry Hive Dump via reg.exe by Sandworm

Suspicious Registry SYSTEM Hive Dump via Reg Save (via process_creation)

Malicious SAM and SYSTEM Hive Dump via reg save

Pivot detection · T1003.002 · 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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