Process Injection: Portable Executable Injection T1055.002

Tactics: Stealth, Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may inject portable executables (PE) into processes in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. PE injection is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

Events covered

18 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 8 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 (8 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.

FieldRulesHowSample values
EventID4eq 410, 8
TargetImage4ends_with 2, in 2*\\calc.exe, *\\calculatorapp.exe, *\\backgroundtaskhost.exe, *\\cmd.exe, .exe
EventType2eq 1, in 1ConnectionSuccess, CreateRemoteThreadApiCall, NtAllocateVirtualMemoryRemoteApiCall, NtMapViewOfSectionRemoteApiCall
GrantedAccess2in 20x1fffff, 0x40, 0x1f3fff
ScriptBlockText2in 2[reflection.assembly]::load, [system.reflection.assembly]::load, adjusttokenprivileges, assembly.load(, createremotethread
event.category2eq 2process
DestinationPort1eq 19389
process_id1ne 1InitiatingProcessId

Top indicator values (76 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.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
EventIDeq
10
216
EventIDeq
8
211
GrantedAccessin
0x1fffff
24
GrantedAccessin
0x40
23
GrantedAccessin
0x1f3fff
1
TargetImagein
*\\calc.exe
22
TargetImagein
*\\calculatorapp.exe
22
TargetImagein
*\\notepad.exe
22
TargetImagein
*\\win32calc.exe
22
event.categoryeq
process
2128
DestinationPorteq
9389
15
EventTypeeq
ConnectionSuccess
19
EventTypein
CreateRemoteThreadApiCall
13
EventTypein
NtAllocateVirtualMemoryRemoteApiCall
12
EventTypein
NtMapViewOfSectionRemoteApiCall
12
EventTypein
QueueUserApcRemoteApiCall
13
EventTypein
SetThreadContextRemoteApiCall
13
ScriptBlockTextin
[reflection.assembly]::load
1
ScriptBlockTextin
[system.reflection.assembly]::load
1
ScriptBlockTextin
adjusttokenprivileges
1
ScriptBlockTextin
assembly.load(
1
ScriptBlockTextin
createremotethread
1
ScriptBlockTextin
createthread
1
ScriptBlockTextin
deflatestream
1
ScriptBlockTextin
downloaddata
1
ScriptBlockTextin
frombase64string
1
ScriptBlockTextin
getdelegateforfunctionpointer
1
ScriptBlockTextin
getprocaddress
1
ScriptBlockTextin
gzipstream
1
ScriptBlockTextin
io.compression
1

Exclusions (13 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.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
Imagein
%systemroot%\\*
1
Imagein
*:\\windows\\program files (x86)\\*
1
Imagein
*:\\windows\\program files\\*
1
Imagein
*:\\windows\\system32\\*
1
Imagein
*:\\windows\\syswow64\\*
1
Imagein
*\\program files\\*
1
Imagein
*\\system32\\*
1
Imagein
*\\syswow64\\*
1
Imagein
c:\\program file*
1
Imagein
c:\\windows\\*
1
Imagestarts_with
folderpath
1
file.directoryin
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection\Downloads
1
file.directoryin
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection\SenseCM
1

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.

Platform (all)
Domain (all)

Elastic 2 rules

Splunk 4 rules

Kusto 2 rules