Untrusted Makop Ransomware Vulnerable Driver hlpdrv Drop for EDR Kill (via file_event)

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
file_event
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-08-30
Updated
2026-08-30

ATT&CK techniques

  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

  14. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the Makop intrusion set dropping the hlpdrv vulnerable driver used to terminate endpoint protection at the kernel level before encryption. Adversaries deploy this abusable driver to disable defenses through bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver. Appearance of this specific driver filename on disk indicates staging for defense evasion.

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange
Windows Defender Tampering via Set-MpPreference and Exclusions
Suspicious Windows Defender Real-Time Protection Disabled via Policy Registry by Cephalus Ransomware
Suspicious Microsoft Defender Path Exclusion of User Directories (via process_creation)
Malicious Windows Defender Tampering via Set-MpPreference (via process_creation)
Malicious Container Runtime Tampering via chmod on runc (via process_creation)
In-Memory AMSI or ETW Bypass in PowerShell (via process_creation)
Malicious Microsoft Defender Critical Security Components Disabled - Command (via process_creation)
Malicious Microsoft Defender Service Deactivation Attempt - Command (via process_creation)
Malicious Wdigest Authentication Enabled - Reg via Command (via process_creation)
Untrusted Makop Ransomware Vulnerable Driver hlpdrv Drop for EDR Kill (via file_event)
Pivot detection · T1685 · 9 related

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