Malicious WDigest UseLogonCredential Cleartext Credential Enablement

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
- T1112Modify Registry
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1112Modify Registry
Cred Access
- T1003.001LSASS Memory
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the WDigest UseLogonCredential value being set to one, which forces Windows to keep cleartext credentials in memory. In the WithSecure Catching Lazarus Part Two research the actor enables this before running Mimikatz to recover plaintext passwords from lsass. Attackers flip this setting to make credential theft trivial on modern Windows.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1112 — drag to rearrange

Malicious WDigest UseLogonCredential Enabled for Cleartext Credential Theft (via registry_set)

Malicious Restricted Admin Mode Enabled for Pass-the-Hash RDP

Malicious WDigest Credential Caching Enabled via Registry (via registry_set)

Malicious WDigest UseLogonCredential Enabled for Cleartext Credential Caching

Malicious WDigest UseLogonCredential Enablement For Credential Theft

Suspicious OneNote Embedded File Open Warning Disabled via Registry

Suspicious Run Key Persistence via Reg Add

Malicious LSASS Memory Dump via rundll32 comsvcs MiniDump

Malicious Task Manager Disabling via DisableTaskMgr Policy Registry Value

Malicious WDigest UseLogonCredential Cleartext Credential Enablement

Pivot detection · T1112 · 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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