Suspicious SharpDPAPI Machine Masterkey Extraction (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
- T1552.004Private Keys
- T1555Credentials from Password Stores
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects command lines invoking SharpDPAPI machine masterkey or machine credential functions, the tooling used to recover machine-scoped DPAPI keys and ultimately active ADFS signing keys in the observed intrusion. Adversaries extract these keys to decrypt protected secrets and forge SAML tokens for cloud access, so SharpDPAPI machine operations are a high-fidelity credential access indicator.

Reporting behind it

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

Suspicious SharpDPAPI Machine Masterkey Extraction (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1555 · 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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