Suspicious Outbound Network Connection from Windows Dialer Process

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
network_connection
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-07-10
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → C2
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Defense Evasion

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the legitimate Windows dialer.exe process in System32 initiating outbound network connections which is anomalous because the tool is rarely executed and does not normally beacon. In the copyright infringement infostealer campaign the loader injected shellcode into system32 dialer.exe to proxy command and control traffic making dialer network activity a strong compromise signal.

Related detections9 linkedT1071.001 — drag to rearrange
Suspicious RuntimeBroker Network Connection via Loki Mythic Agent
Suspicious Network Connection From wabmig.exe (Turian Injection)
Suspicious netsh Outbound Network Connection from IDAT Loader Injection
Suspicious Excel Outbound Network Connection
Malicious Data Exfiltration via curl with Stealer Specific BuildID Header
Suspicious Shadow File Exfiltration Over Dev TCP on Linux via Process Creation (via process_creation)
Suspicious Netcat Reverse Shell via Named Pipe on Linux via Process Creation (via process_creation)
Suspicious PowerShell Shellcode Loader via Function Pointer Delegate
Malicious GenAI Browser Extension C2 and PAC Redirection (via proxy)
Suspicious Outbound Network Connection from Windows Dialer Process
Pivot detection · T1071.001 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.