Steal or Forge Authentication Certificates T1649
Adversaries may steal or forge certificates used for authentication to access remote systems or resources. Digital certificates are often used to sign and encrypt messages and/or files. Certificates are also used as authentication material. For example, Entra ID device certificates and Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) certificates bind to an identity and can be used as credentials for domain accounts.
Events covered
12 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 25 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 (16 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 (112 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 (3 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 4 rules
- Certificate Exported From Local Certificate Store
- Certificate Private Key Acquired
- HackTool - Certify Execution
- HackTool - Certipy Execution
Elastic 1 rule
Splunk 20 rules
- Certificate Abuse - Windows (Sysmon)
- Certificate Abuse - Windows (Windows Event Log)
- Certificate Enumeration - Windows (Windows Event Log)
- Certutil exe certificate extraction
- Detect Certify Command Line Arguments
- Detect Certify With PowerShell Script Block Logging
- Detect Certipy File Modifications
- Windows Export Certificate
- Windows Mimikatz Crypto Export File Extensions
- Windows PowerShell Export Certificate
- Windows PowerShell Export PfxCertificate
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates - ESC1 Abuse
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates - ESC1 Authentication
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates Certificate Issued
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates Certificate Request
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates CertUtil Backup
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates CryptoAPI
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates CS Backup
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates Export Certificate
- Windows Steal Authentication Certificates Export PfxCertificate