ATT&CK coverage › Technique
Event Triggered Execution: Application Shimming T1546.011
Adversaries may establish persistence and/or elevate privileges by executing malicious content triggered by application shims. The Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Infrastructure/Framework (Application Shim) was created to allow for backward compatibility of software as the operating system codebase changes over time. For example, the application shimming feature allows developers to apply fixes to applications (without rewriting code) that were created for Windows XP so that it will work with Windows 10.
Events covered
3 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | 11 | FileCreate |
| Sysmon | 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 8 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (8 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (31 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 6 rules
- Potential Persistence Via AppCompat RegisterAppRestart Layer
- Potential Persistence Via Shim Database In Uncommon Location
- Potential Persistence Via Shim Database Modification
- Potential Shim Database Persistence via Sdbinst.EXE
- Suspicious Shim Database Patching Activity
- Uncommon Extension Shim Database Installation Via Sdbinst.EXE