Suspicious Sednit Guardrailed Loader DLL Loaded Outside System32

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 Sednit SlimAgent and BeardShell loaders masquerading as eapphost.dll or tcpiphlpsvc.dll being loaded into their guardrail host processes explorer.exe, taskhost.exe or taskhostw.exe from a location outside the System32 directory. The genuine libraries live in System32, so a same-named module loaded from elsewhere into these processes indicates the impersonating implant.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Sednit Guardrailed Loader DLL Loaded Outside System32

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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