Potential DLL Sideloading Via comctl32.dll

Severity: high
Author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), Subhash Popuri (@pbssubhash)
Source: upstream

Detects potential DLL sideloading using comctl32.dll to obtain system privileges

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Persistence	`T1574.001` Hijack Execution Flow: DLL
Privilege Escalation	`T1574.001` Hijack Execution Flow: DLL
Defense Evasion	`T1574.001` Hijack Execution Flow: DLL

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	7	Image loaded

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `selection`

or:
ImageLoaded|startswith: 'C:\Windows\System32\consent.exe.local\'
ImageLoaded|startswith: 'C:\Windows\System32\logonUI.exe.local\'
ImageLoaded|startswith: 'C:\Windows\System32\narrator.exe.local\'
ImageLoaded|startswith: 'C:\Windows\System32\werFault.exe.local\'
ImageLoaded|startswith: 'C:\windows\system32\wermgr.exe.local\'
ImageLoaded|endswith: '\comctl32.dll'

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.