Suspicious SAM Registry Hive Dump to Windows Temp by BianLian

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 saving of the SAM registry hive into the Windows Temp directory, matching the credential access technique used by the BianLian ransomware group per Unit 42. Extracting the SAM hive lets the actor recover local account password hashes offline which supports lateral movement across the environment.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1003.002 — drag to rearrange

Malicious NTDS Extraction from Volume Shadow Copy by RA World

Malicious Flax Typhoon SAM and SECURITY Registry Hive Dump via reg save (via process_creation)

Malicious Registry Hive Dump for Credential Access via reg save (via process_creation)

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

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

Suspicious SAM Registry Hive Dump to Windows Temp by BianLian

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.

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 →