Suspicious Credential Dump via Registry Hive Save

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1003.002Security Account Manager
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects use of reg.exe to save the SAM SECURITY or SYSTEM registry hives to disk, an OS credential dumping technique used in the REF7707 campaign to harvest secrets alongside ntds.dit theft. Exporting these hives lets an attacker extract local account hashes and boot keys offline. Saving protected hives is rarely part of normal administration and indicates credential access.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1003.002 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious Registry Hive Export of SAM and SECURITY for Credential Theft after FortiClient EMS Exploitation

Malicious Registry Hive Dump via reg save

Malicious SAM and SYSTEM Registry Hive Credential Dump via reg.exe (via process_creation)

Malicious Registry Hive Theft from Shadow Copy via Print LOLBIN

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Access via Mklink to GLOBALROOT

Suspicious Credential Dump via Registry Hive Save

Pivot detection · T1003.002 · 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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