Malicious Vulnerable Driver Deployment for EDR Termination via file_event

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1211Exploitation for Stealth
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects deployment of the vulnerable drivers aswArPots.sys and IObitUnlockers.sys that GHOSTENGINE abuses to terminate endpoint security processes and delete their binaries. These bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver components provide kernel-level primitives to disable defenses. Their presence indicates an active attempt to blind security tooling.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Microsoft Defender Path Exclusion of User Directories (via process_creation)

Malicious Windows Defender Tampering via Set-MpPreference (via process_creation)

Malicious Container Runtime Tampering via chmod on runc (via process_creation)

In-Memory AMSI or ETW Bypass in PowerShell (via process_creation)

Malicious Microsoft Defender Critical Security Components Disabled - Command (via process_creation)

Malicious Microsoft Defender Service Deactivation Attempt - Command (via process_creation)

Malicious Vulnerable Driver Deployment for EDR Termination via file_event

Pivot detection · T1685 · 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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