ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Event Triggered Execution: Component Object Model Hijacking T1546.015

Adversaries may establish persistence by executing malicious content triggered by hijacked references to Component Object Model (COM) objects. COM is a system within Windows to enable interaction between software components through the operating system. References to various COM objects are stored in the Registry.

Events covered

5 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)
Security-Auditing4657A registry value was modified.
Defender-DeviceRegistryEvents9005003Registry value set
PowerShell4104Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal).

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 11 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 (9 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.

FieldRulesHowSample values
TargetObject7ends_with 5, match 4ShellFolder, TreatAs\(Default), \CLSID\, \{30D49246-D217-465F-B00B-AC9DDD652EB7}\, \{7849596a-48ea-486e-8937-a2a3009f31a9}\
Image3ends_with 2, eq 2, starts_with 1C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft..., C:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe, \OfficeClickToRun.exe, C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe, \rundll32.exe
Details3eq 2, match 1\Desktop\, \Contacts\, \System32\spool\drivers\color\, C:\WINDOWS\system32\scrobj.dll, %windir%\System32\ActXPrxy.dll
ScriptBlockText3eq 2, match 1::GetTypeFromCLSID(, .ShellExecute(, "*Software\\Classes\\CLSID\\*\\InProcServer32*", "*CreateInstance([type]::GetTypeFromCLSID*"
EventID2eq 24104
ActionType1eq 1RegistryValueSet
RegistryValueName1eq 1Attributes
OriginalFileName1eq 1RUNDLL32.EXE
CommandLine1match 1}, -localserver , -sta

Top indicator values (70 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.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
EventIDeq41042108
TargetObjectmatchShellFolder1
RegistryValueNameeqAttributes1
ActionTypeeqRegistryValueSet1
ImageeqC:\Windows\system32\msiexec.exe12
ImageeqC:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\integration\integrator.exe16
ImageeqC:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe15
Imagestarts_withC:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\ClickToRun\18
Imageends_with\OfficeClickToRun.exe110
TargetObjectends_withTreatAs\(Default)1
ImageeqC:\Windows\SysWOW64\msiexec.exe14
ImageeqC:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\root\integration\integrator.exe16
Detailsmatch\Users\Public\15
Detailsmatch%temp%13
TargetObjectmatch\{7849596a-48ea-486e-8937-a2a3009f31a9}\1
TargetObjectmatch\{A7A63E5C-3877-4840-8727-C1EA9D7A4D50}\1
TargetObjectmatch\{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}\1
TargetObjectmatch\{F56F6FDD-AA9D-4618-A949-C1B91AF43B1A}\1
TargetObjectmatch\{2155fee3-2419-4373-b102-6843707eb41f}\1
Detailsmatch\Pictures\13

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 8 rules

Splunk 2 rules

Kusto Query Language 1 rule