ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Impair Defenses T1562

Adversaries may maliciously modify components of a victim environment in order to hinder or disable defensive mechanisms. This not only involves impairing preventative defenses, such as firewalls and anti-virus, but also detection capabilities that defenders can use to audit activity and identify malicious behavior. This may also span both native defenses as well as supplemental capabilities installed by users and administrators.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon12RegistryEvent (Object create and delete)
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)
Sysmon14RegistryEvent (Key and Value Rename)
Security-Auditing4657A registry value was modified.
Security-Auditing4663An attempt was made to access an object.
Security-Auditing4670Permissions on an object were changed.
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.
Security-Auditing4719System audit policy was changed.
Security-Auditing4720A user account was created.
Security-Auditing4738A user account was changed.
Security-Auditing5152The Windows Filtering Platform blocked a packet.
Security-Auditing5157The Windows Filtering Platform has blocked a connection.
Security-Auditing5441The following filter was present when the Windows Filtering Platform Base Filtering Engine started.
Security-Auditing5447A Windows Filtering Platform filter has been changed.
Application-Popup26Application popup: Caption : Message.
Defender-DeviceProcessEvents9001000Process activity (any)
Defender-DeviceRegistryEvents9005003Registry value set
PowerShell4104Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal).

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 35 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 (28 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
CommandLine9match 9, ends_with 1unload, "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\, RecoveryKeyMessageSource, /f, stop-service
TargetObject9match 4, ends_with 3, starts_with 1, eq 1\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows..., Index, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows..., HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows..., HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows...
Image8ends_with 7, eq 1\fltMC.exe, \EDRSilencer.exe, \secedit.exe, \WMIC.exe, C:\Windows\SysWOW64\svchost.exe
OriginalFileName6eq 6fltMC.exe, EDRSilencer.exe, SeCEdit, wmic.exe, PowerShell.EXE
Details5eq 5DWORD (0x00000000), 0, DWORD (0x00000002), DWORD (0x00000001)
EventID4eq 2, in 24657, 4104, 4735, 4670, 4764
EventType2eq 2windows-firewall-packet-drop, windows-firewall-packet-block, deleted
FileName2eq 2powershell.exe, taskkill.exe
ObjectName2match 2, ends_with 1Schedule\\TaskCache\\Tree, \SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework, \Environment
ObjectValueName2eq 2SD, COMPlus_ETWEnabled, COMPlus_ETWFlags, ETWEnabled
ScriptBlockText2match 1, eq 1 -ExclusionExtension , -ExclusionIpAddress , Set-MpPreference , *system.management.automation.amsi*
isOutlier2eq 21
registry_path2eq 2"*\\Outlook\\Options\\General*", "*\\Schedule\\TaskCache\\Tree\\*"
registry_value_name2eq 2"PONT_STRING", "SD"
NewUACList1eq 1USER_DONT_REQUIRE_PREAUTH

Top indicator values (439 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
DetailseqDWORD (0x00000000)338
TargetObjectmatch\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Schedule\TaskCache\Tree\33
Detailseq024
OriginalFileNameeqfltMC.exe22
Imageends_with\fltMC.exe22
CommandLinematchunload22
TargetObjectmatchIndex22
isOutliereq1216
NewUACListeqUSER_DONT_REQUIRE_PREAUTH1
process_nameeqemu-gui.exe1
process_nameeqklnagent.exe1
process_nameeqsysmon.exe1
process_nameeqmacmnsvc.exe1
process_nameeqSCFManager.exe1
process_nameeqWatchDog.exe1
process_nameeqsubmitv.exe1
process_nameeqmfeesp.exe1
process_nameeqSavProgress.exe1
process_nameeqswi_service.exe1
process_nameeqmcupdate.exe1

Common exclusions (1 distinct)

Field/operator/value combinations that rules under this technique routinely exclude (top-level not() clauses). These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
process_nameeq"Outlook.exe"1

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 20 rules

Elastic 3 rules

Splunk 5 rules

Kusto Query Language 7 rules