ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Hijack Execution Flow T1574

Adversaries may execute their own malicious payloads by hijacking the way operating systems run programs. Hijacking execution flow can be for the purposes of persistence, since this hijacked execution may reoccur over time. Adversaries may also use these mechanisms to elevate privileges or evade defenses, such as application control or other restrictions on execution.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon7Image loaded
Sysmon11FileCreate
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.
Defender-DeviceProcessEvents9001000Process activity (any)

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 7 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 (11 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
Image4ends_with 3, in 1\register-cimprovider.exe, \excel.exe, \MSACCESS.EXE, \pwsh.exe, \regsvr32.exe
CommandLine3match 3, contains 1, is_null 1, eq 1ipconfig, wget, timeout, -path, dll
Details2eq 2"C:\Windows\system32\vsjitdebugger.exe" PID %d APPDOM %d..., (Empty)
TargetObject2ends_with 1, match 1\Microsoft\.NETFramework\DbgManagedDebugger, \Version-3\PDF24\, \VNC Printer (UD)\, \VNC Printer (PS)\
OriginalFileName2eq 1, in 1REGSVR32.EXE, "BDSubmit.exe", "bdsw.exe"
FileName1in 1cmd.exe, powershell.exe
ParentImage1starts_with 1, in 1httpd.exe, beasvc.exe, w3wp.exe
InitiatingProcessFileName1in 1, starts_with 1httpd.exe, beasvc.exe, w3wp.exe
TargetFilename1ends_with 1, match 1\Microsoft\OneDrive\, \api-ms-win-core-, \Local\slack\app-
ImageLoaded1eq 1"*\\log.dll"
EventID1eq 17

Top indicator values (68 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
CommandLinematchping14
ParentImageinbeasvc.exe1
InitiatingProcessFileNameinbeasvc.exe1
FileNameinpowershell.exe1
CommandLinecontains%temp%1
CommandLinematchcertutil15
CommandLinematchtimeout1
CommandLinematchwhoami1
ParentImagestarts_withtomcat1
InitiatingProcessFileNameinw3wp.exe1
FileNameincmd.exe1
InitiatingProcessFileNamestarts_withtomcat1
ParentImageinw3wp.exe1
CommandLinematchipconfig1
CommandLinematchwget12
InitiatingProcessFileNameinhttpd.exe1
ParentImageinhttpd.exe1
CommandLinematchsysteminfo1
CommandLinematchdll1
Imageends_with\register-cimprovider.exe1

Common exclusions (4 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
ImageLoadedin"*:\\Program Files (x86)\\*"1
ImageLoadedin"*:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\*"1
ImageLoadedin"*:\\Windows\\System32\\*"1
ImageLoadedin"*:\\Program Files\\*"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 5 rules

Splunk 1 rule

Kusto Query Language 1 rule