Malicious Whole-Drive Defender Exclusion via Add-MpPreference (via ps_script)

ATT&CK techniques

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

What it detects

This rule detects a PowerShell command adding the entire C drive as a Microsoft Defender exclusion path via Add-MpPreference, the defense-evasion step used by the D3F@ck MaaS loader before dropping payloads. Excluding the whole system drive from scanning is never a legitimate administrative action and effectively blinds Defender. This precedes RegAsm.exe injection of Raccoon Stealer.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious CrazyHunter BYOVD Driver Drop in Public Directory

Suspicious Execution of cfmon.exe Masquerading as ctfmon via CharmingCypress

Suspicious SELinux Enforcement Disabled via Setenforce Command Line (via process_creation)

Suspicious SELinux and Firewall Disabling on Linux by Cryptominer (via process_creation)

Malicious Whole-Drive Defender Exclusion via Add-MpPreference (via ps_script)

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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