Malicious User Account Control Bypass via Auto-Elevating Binary Hijack (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1548.002Bypass User Account Control
Defense Evasion
- T1548.002Bypass User Account Control
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a known auto-elevating Windows binary such as fodhelper, computerdefaults, eventvwr or sdclt spawning a command shell or script interpreter, the tell-tale child-process pattern of a User Account Control bypass. UAC bypasses are a recurring privilege-escalation and defense-evasion technique in the Red Canary Threat Detection Report, letting adversaries obtain a high-integrity process without a prompt. Detecting these parent-child pairs surfaces the elevation attempt.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1548.002 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious UAC Bypass by Disabling Admin Consent Prompt via registry_set

Malicious Cloud Atlas UAC Bypass via fodhelper (via process_creation)

Suspicious computerdefaults.exe Spawning Child Process

Suspicious UAC Bypass via control.exe App Paths or Shell Open Command Hijack

Malicious UAC Bypass via COMAutoApprovalList Registry Modification (via registry_set)

Suspicious UAC Bypass via COMAutoApprovalList Registry Modification (via registry_set)

Malicious UAC Bypass via explorer.exe NOUACCHECK Argument

Suspicious UAC Bypass via ms-settings Shell Command Hijack (via registry_set)

Suspicious UAC Weakening via ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin Disable by Winos (via registry_set)

Malicious User Account Control Bypass via Auto-Elevating Binary Hijack (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1548.002 · 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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