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Windows Process Access: Suspicious GrantedAccess Flags Targeting lsass.exe

Alerts on process access attempts to lsass.exe with GrantedAccess rights commonly linked to credential theft behavior.

FreeReviewedSigma · Medium · v4
Product
windows
Category
process_access
Author
Florian Roth, Roberto Rodriguez, Dimitrios Slamaris, Mark Russinovich, Thomas Patzke, Teymur Kheirkhabarov, Sherif Eldeeb, James Dickenson, Aleksey Potapov, oscd.community (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published
2021-11-22
Updated
2026-10-20
AnalysisDetection

ATT&CK techniques

Cred Access

  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 identifies Windows process access events where the target process name ends with \lsass.exe and the requested GrantedAccess value matches a set of potentially suspicious access-rights flags. Such access to LSASS is high risk because it can indicate attempts to read or interact with the credential-handling process. The detection relies on process access telemetry (process_access) that includes the initiating process image, the TargetImage, and the GrantedAccess value, with exclusions for common legitimate tooling and security products.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1003.001 — drag to rearrange
Malicious Credential Extraction via Volatility Memory Analysis (via process_creation)
Suspicious Physical Memory Acquisition via WinPmem (via process_creation)
Malicious LSASS Credential Dump via Rundll32 Comsvcs MiniDump via Process Creation (via process_creation)
Suspicious LSASS Credential Access via PowerShell (via process_creation)
Suspicious LSASS Memory Dump via Task Manager After Ivanti Exploitation
Suspicious ProcDump LSASS Memory Dump via process_creation
Malicious Mimikatz Credential Dump Log File Creation (via file_event)
Malicious WDigest UseLogonCredential Enabled for Cleartext Credential Theft (via registry_set)
Suspicious LSASS Memory Dump via Procdump Process Creation
Windows Process Access: Suspicious GrantedAccess Flags Targeting lsass.exe
Pivot detection · T1003.001 · 9 related

Changelog

v4
  1. v4
    Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-10-20
  2. v2
    Candidate ingested via manual entry.2026-07-31
  3. v1
    No changelog recorded for this version.2026-07-30

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