Malicious UPlugPlay Service Creation Masquerading as PlugPlay

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc

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

What it detects

This rule detects creation of a service named UPlugPlay, the persistence service Prometei installs to masquerade as the legitimate PlugPlay service. The botnet registered an auto-start UPlugPlay service pointing at its sqhost.exe binary to survive reboots. The near-identical service name to a real Windows service is a deliberate masquerade with no legitimate counterpart.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1543.003 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious UPlugPlay Service Creation Masquerading as PlugPlay

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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