Suspicious Registry Hive Export of SAM and SECURITY for Credential Theft after FortiClient EMS Exploitation

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1003.002Security Account Manager
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects use of reg.exe to save the SAM or SECURITY registry hives, a credential-theft step used by actors exploiting the FortiClient EMS vulnerability. Exporting these hives allows offline extraction of local account password hashes. Saving these sensitive hives to disk indicates credential dumping.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1003.002 — drag to rearrange

Malicious Registry Hive Dump via reg save

Malicious SAM and SYSTEM Registry Hive Credential Dump via reg.exe (via process_creation)

Malicious Registry Hive Theft from Shadow Copy via Print LOLBIN

Malicious Volume Shadow Copy Access via Mklink to GLOBALROOT

Malicious Registry Hive Dump via Reg Save for Credential Theft

Malicious Registry Hive Dump via reg save of SAM SYSTEM SECURITY

Suspicious Credential Dump via Registry Hive Save

Malicious Credential Hive Dump via Reg Save

Credential Dumping via Reg Save of SAM Hive

Suspicious Registry Hive Export of SAM and SECURITY for Credential Theft after FortiClient EMS Exploitation

Pivot detection · T1003.002 · 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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