Suspicious Acrobat.exe Loading Co-located DLL from ProgramData

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1574.001DLL
Persistence
- T1574.001DLL
Priv Esc
- T1574.001DLL
Defense Evasion
- T1574.001DLL
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a signed Acrobat.exe located under ProgramData side-loading a co-located Acrobat.dll. Adversaries plant an unsigned malicious DLL beside a legitimate signed executable in ProgramData so it is loaded under a trusted process. This masquerade plus wrong-path context is a strong indicator of DLL side-loading.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Acrobat.exe Loading Co-located DLL from ProgramData

Pivot detection · T1574.001 · 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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