Malicious Update Orchestrator Service Reconfiguration for Privilege Escalation

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1543.003Windows Service
Priv Esc
- T1543.003Windows Service
- T1548Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Defense Evasion
- T1548Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects reconfiguration of the Update Orchestrator Service binary path via sc.exe, the abuse chain behind CVE-2019-1322 that runs an attacker command as SYSTEM. Repointing UsoSvc to an arbitrary command lets a low-privileged user escalate to SYSTEM when the service restarts.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1543.003 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious RustDesk Remote Access Service Installation via sc (via process_creation)

Malicious Service Creation Pointing to Public Data File via sc (via process_creation)

EAP Service Activation by Liontail Framework for DLL Sideloading - Via Command (via process_creation)

Malicious Service Permissions Hijacked for Privileges Abuse - Service (via process_creation)

Malicious Service Abuse with Backdoored "command Failure" - Service (via process_creation)

Malicious Service Permissions Hijacked for Privileges Abuse - Reg via Command (via process_creation)

Malicious Mimikatz Driver Registration - Reg via Sysmon (via registry_event)

Suspicious PSexec Service Installation (via security)

Suspicious Impact of 'SMOKEDHAM Backdoor' with MSDTC Service Privilege Escalation via Command Line (via process_creation)

Malicious Update Orchestrator Service Reconfiguration for Privilege Escalation

Pivot detection · T1543.003 · 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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