Malicious Vulnerable Driver Mapping via KDU

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1068Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
Defense Evasion
- T1014Rootkit
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects execution of the Kernel Driver Utility kdu.exe with its provider and driver-mapping flags, a bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver technique observed in the ESXi exploitation activity to load unsigned kernel code. KDU abuses a signed vulnerable driver to map an attacker driver such as MyDriver.sys into the kernel, defeating driver signature enforcement. Presence of kdu.exe with these arguments indicates kernel-level defense evasion.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1068 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Kernel Module Load From World Writable Directory on Linux

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Suspicious Kernel Module Load Or Unload For Rootkit Deployment via PUMAKIT

Suspicious Fileless Execution From Memory File Descriptor via PUMAKIT

Suspicious Modification of etc passwd Following Linux Kernel Exploit

Malicious ABYSSWORKER EDR-Killer Driver Load via smuol.sys

Malicious Vulnerable Driver Mapping via KDU

Pivot detection · T1068 · 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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