Suspicious Object Access to DPAPI Machine Keys and System Protect Directories (via security)

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1552.004Private Keys
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects object access audit events for the DPAPI MachineKeys and the System (S-1-5-18) Protect directories by processes other than core system services, matching the file access seen while recovering active ADFS signing keys via machine DPAPI. Adversaries read these locations to obtain machine masterkeys and protected private keys, so unexpected access here indicates credential theft from key stores.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1552.004 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Process Memory Read from Proc Mem for Secret Extraction

Suspicious Double Base64 Decoded Payload Piped to Shell in CI (reviewdog Supply Chain)

Suspicious macOS Local Credential Validation via dscl authonly

Suspicious Credential File Harvesting of NPM Claude and SSH Secrets

Suspicious SharpDPAPI Machine Masterkey Extraction (via process_creation)

Suspicious Credential File Discovery via Find on Linux

Possible CI Runner Memory Scraping via Python Process Memory Read (tj-actions Supply Chain)

Windows File Writes Matching DPAPI Backup Key and Certificate Export Filenames

PowerShell Certificate Export Cmdlets in Windows Process Creation

Suspicious Object Access to DPAPI Machine Keys and System Protect Directories (via security)

Pivot detection · T1552.004 · 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 →