Malicious Windows Defender Exclusion Added for PowerShell and conhost

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 Add-MpPreference being used to register Windows Defender process exclusions for powershell or conhost. The ClipBanker campaign distributed through a trojanized Proxifier excluded its own living-off-the-land binaries from Defender scanning to run undetected as reported by Kaspersky. Adding process exclusions for these interpreters is a strong defense-evasion signal that precedes payload execution.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Microsoft Defender Real-Time Monitoring Disabled via Set-MpPreference (via process_creation)

Suspicious Windows Defender Exclusion Added via PowerShell via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Malicious TCC AppleEvents Reset via Tccutil

Suspicious ESXi Management Agent Stop via vpxa init Script (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Firewall Disable via esxcli (via process_creation)

Malicious ESXi Syslog Redirection to tmp via esxcli

Suspicious Windows Defender Exclusion Enumeration via reg query (via process_creation)

Malicious Windows Defender Exclusion Added via PowerShell (via process_creation)

Malicious BYOVD EDR Kill via Renamed GMER Driver by Agonizing Serpens

Malicious Windows Defender Exclusion Added for PowerShell and conhost

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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