Suspicious DllHost Spawned By MMC Without Arguments via PASTALOADER

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1055Process Injection
Defense Evasion
- T1055Process Injection
- T1620Reflective Code Loading
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects dllhost.exe launched by mmc.exe with an empty or missing command line which is characteristic of the PASTALOADER stage of GrimResource where shellcode is injected into a freshly spawned dllhost.exe process. Adversaries use this sacrificial COM surrogate combined with DirtyCLR unhooking and indirect syscalls to stealthily load Cobalt Strike.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious DllHost Spawned By MMC Without Arguments via PASTALOADER

Pivot detection · T1055 · 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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