ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Inter-Process Communication: Dynamic Data Exchange T1559.002

Adversaries may use Windows Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) to execute arbitrary commands. DDE is a client-server protocol for one-time and/or continuous inter-process communication (IPC) between applications. Once a link is established, applications can autonomously exchange transactions consisting of strings, warm data links (notifications when a data item changes), hot data links (duplications of changes to a data item), and requests for command execution.

Events covered

1 catalog event are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 1 rule 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 (2 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
Details1eq 1DWORD (0x00000001), DWORD (0x00000002), DWORD (0x00000000)
TargetObject1ends_with 1\Excel\Security\DisableDDEServerLaunch, \Word\Security\AllowDDE, \Excel\Security\DisableDDEServerLookup

Top indicator values (6 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
TargetObjectends_with\Excel\Security\DisableDDEServerLookup1
DetailseqDWORD (0x00000000)138
TargetObjectends_with\Excel\Security\DisableDDEServerLaunch1
DetailseqDWORD (0x00000001)137
DetailseqDWORD (0x00000002)19
TargetObjectends_with\Word\Security\AllowDDE1

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 1 rule