Windows Credential Guard Disabled - Registry

Severity: high
Author: Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)
Source: upstream

Detects attempts to disable Windows Credential Guard by setting registry values to 0. Credential Guard uses virtualization-based security to isolate secrets so that only privileged system software can access them. Adversaries may disable Credential Guard to gain access to sensitive credentials stored in the system, such as NTLM hashes and Kerberos tickets, which can be used for lateral movement and privilege escalation.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Defense Evasion	`T1562.001` Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	13	RegistryEvent (Value Set)

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `selection`

or:
TargetObject|endswith: '\DeviceGuard\EnableVirtualizationBasedSecurity'
TargetObject|endswith: '\DeviceGuard\LsaCfgFlags'
TargetObject|endswith: '\Lsa\LsaCfgFlags'
Details: 'DWORD (0x00000000)'

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.