Hijack Execution Flow: DLL Side-Loading T1574.002
Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by side-loading DLLs. Similar to DLL, side-loading involves hijacking which DLL a program loads. But rather than just planting the DLL within the search order of a program then waiting for the victim application to be invoked, adversaries may directly side-load their payloads by planting then invoking a legitimate application that executes their payload(s).
Events covered
10 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Sysmon | Event ID 7 | Image loaded |
| Sysmon | Event ID 11 | FileCreate |
| Sysmon | Event ID 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4648 | A logon was attempted using explicit credentials. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 6416 | A new external device was recognized by the system. |
| Defender-DeviceImageLoadEvents | any | Image load (any) |
| DNS-Server-Service | Event ID 150 | The DNS server could not load or initialize the plug-in DLL Name. |
| DNS-Server-Service | Event ID 770 | A DNS server plugin DLL has been loaded from location param1 on server param2. |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 10 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names 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 (22 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 (46 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. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (4 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. 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. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
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 7 rules
- DLL ServerLevelPluginDll command installation
- DLL ServerLevelPluginDll registration ("serverlevelplugindll" feature abuse)
- DLL ServerLevelPluginDll registration (Reg via Sysmon)
- Possible impact of 'SMOKEDHAM backdoor' with MSDTC service privilege escalation via command line
- Spool process spawned a CMD shell (PrintNightmare vulnerability - CVE-2021-36958)
- SystemNightmare by GentilKiwi - External printer mapped (CVE-2021-1675 / CVE-2021-34527)
- SystemNightmare by GentilKiwi - New external device added (CVE-2021-1675 / CVE-2021-34527)