Detection rules › Sigma
Disabling Windows Defender WMI Autologger Session via Reg.exe
Detects the use of reg.exe to disable the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) Autologger session for Windows Defender API and Audit events. By setting the 'Start' value to '0' for the 'DefenderApiLogger' or 'DefenderAuditLogger' session, an attacker can prevent these critical security events from being logged, effectively blinding monitoring tools that rely on this data. This is a powerful defense evasion technique.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Defense Evasion | T1562.001 Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | 1 | Process creation |
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: all of selection_img
or:
Image|endswith: '\reg.exe'
OriginalFileName: reg.exe
Stage 2: all of selection_reg_path
or:
CommandLine|contains: '\Control\WMI\Autologger\DefenderApiLogger\Start'
CommandLine|contains: '\Control\WMI\Autologger\DefenderAuditLogger\Start'
Stage 3: all of selection_reg_add
CommandLine|contains: 0
CommandLine|contains: add
Stage 4: not 1 of filter_main_enable
CommandLine|contains: 0x00000001
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.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
CommandLine | match |
|
Image | ends_with |
|
OriginalFileName | eq |
|