huntrule

Windows Registry Printer Driver Installations with Empty Manufacturer Field

Alerts on Windows registry printer driver environment updates where Manufacturer is set to empty.

FreeReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
registry_set
Author
Florian Roth (Nextron Systems) (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published
2020-07-01
Updated
2026-07-30
AnalysisDetection

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

  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 flags printer driver installation changes in the Windows registry where the targeted driver environment path contains a Manufacturer field with the value explicitly set to empty. Attackers can use malformed or incomplete driver metadata to persist or evade normal driver inventory and validation. The detection relies on registry set telemetry for updates under the Windows x64 printer driver environments path and matches the presence of an empty Manufacturer entry while excluding known benign driver identifiers.

Reporting behind it

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Windows DLL execution via register-cimprovider.exe with -path dll
Windows Process Creation: Suspicious SetupComplete.cmd execution for CVE-2019-1378 exploitation
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Windows Registry Printer Driver Installations with Empty Manufacturer Field
Pivot detection · T1574 · 8 related

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