Suspicious FL Studio Executable Side-Loading flengine DLL From Non-Standard Path

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 the legitimate FL Studio binary fl.exe loading flengine.dll from a directory outside its normal installation path which is the DLL side-loading technique used to launch the BITSLOTH backdoor. Adversaries abuse this trusted signed executable to proxy execution of malicious code and evade defenses.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious FL Studio Executable Side-Loading flengine DLL From Non-Standard Path

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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