ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Hijack Execution Flow: Executable Installer File Permissions Weakness T1574.005

Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking the binaries used by an installer. These processes may automatically execute specific binaries as part of their functionality or to perform other actions. If the permissions on the file system directory containing a target binary, or permissions on the binary itself, are improperly set, then the target binary may be overwritten with another binary using user-level permissions and executed by the original process. If the original process and thread are running under a higher permissions level, then the replaced binary will also execute under higher-level permissions, which could include SYSTEM.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 2 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 (5 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
Image2ends_with 1, starts_with 1\SharpUp.exe, C:\~MSSETUP.T\
Description1eq 1SharpUp
CommandLine1match 1CachedGPPPassword, ModifiableServiceBinaries, UnquotedServicePath
ParentCommandLine1match 1 -m
ParentImage1eq 1C:\Windows\SysWOW64\setup16.exe

Top indicator values (12 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
CommandLinematchHijackablePaths1
CommandLinematchModifiableScheduledTask1
Imageends_with\SharpUp.exe12
DescriptioneqSharpUp1
CommandLinematchUnquotedServicePath1
CommandLinematchCachedGPPPassword1
CommandLinematchProcessDLLHijack1
CommandLinematchDomainGPPPassword1
CommandLinematchModifiableServiceBinaries1
ParentCommandLinematch -m 1
ParentImageeqC:\Windows\SysWOW64\setup16.exe1
Imagestarts_withC:\~MSSETUP.T\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 2 rules