DPAPI Backup Keys And Certificate Export Activity IOC

Severity: high
Author: Nounou Mbeiri, Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
Source: upstream

Detects file names with specific patterns seen generated and used by tools such as Mimikatz and DSInternals related to exported or stolen DPAPI backup keys and certificates.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Credential Access	`T1552.004` Unsecured Credentials: Private Keys, `T1555` Credentials from Password Stores

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	11	FileCreate

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `selection`

or:
TargetFilename|endswith: .cer
TargetFilename|endswith: .key
TargetFilename|endswith: .pfx
TargetFilename|endswith: .pvk
or:
TargetFilename|contains: ntds_capi_
TargetFilename|contains: ntds_legacy_
TargetFilename|contains: ntds_unknown_

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.