Suspicious Defender Protection Disabled via Set-MpPreference

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 Set-MpPreference being used to disable Microsoft Defender protections, a tamper step used by The Gentlemen ransomware operators before deploying payloads. Disabling real-time or behavior monitoring removes the primary endpoint control. This is a high-value defense-evasion signal.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Windows Defender Tampering via Command Line

Suspicious macOS SIP Disable via csrutil (via process_creation)

Malicious Firewall Disable via netsh by Key Group Ransomware

Malicious Defender Real-Time Monitoring Disabled via Process Creation

Malicious Windows Defender Exclusion Added via Command Line

Suspicious Exchange IIS Worker Loading GhostContainer Module (via image_load)

Suspicious Dell DBUtilDrv2 Vulnerable Driver Load via driver_load

Suspicious Service ACL Hardening via sc.exe sdset (via process_creation)

Malicious Snatch Ransomware SuperBackupMan SafeBoot Service Registration

Suspicious Defender Protection Disabled via Set-MpPreference

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.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →