Process Injection: Thread Execution Hijacking T1055.003

Tactics: Stealth, Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may inject malicious code into hijacked processes in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. Thread Execution Hijacking is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

Events covered

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

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 4 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 (7 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
Image2contains 1, ends_with 1, eq 1\winword.exe, c:\program files\vmware\vmware tools\vmtoolsd.exe, c:\program..., c:\windows\system32\atbroker.exe
ScriptBlockText2in 2, contains 1, match 1(?i)[c][r][e][a][t][e][p][r][o][c][e][s][s], (?i)[c][r][e][a][t][e][r][e][m][o][t][e][t][h][r][e][a][d], (?i)[c][r][e][a][t][e][t][h][r][e][a][d], adjusttokenprivileges, createremotethread
CallTrace1contains 1:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v2., unknown
EventID1eq 14104
StartFunction1eq 1EtwpNotificationThread, GetCommandLineW, LoadLibraryW
TargetImage1ends_with 1, eq 1\calc.exe, \calculator.exe, \mspaint.exe
event.category1eq 1process

Top indicator values (68 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
CallTracecontains
:\windows\microsoft.net\framework64\v2.
1
CallTracecontains
unknown
15
EventIDeq
4104
1268
Imagecontains
unknown process
1
Imageends_with
\winword.exe
120
Imageeq
c:\program files\vmware\vmware tools\vmtoolsd.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\program...
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\atbroker.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\csrss.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\explorer.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\openwith.exe
1
ScriptBlockTextcontains
add-type
1
ScriptBlockTextcontains
dllimport
1
ScriptBlockTextcontains
resumethread
1
ScriptBlockTextin
*extern bool*
1
ScriptBlockTextin
*extern int*
1
ScriptBlockTextin
*extern intptr*
1
ScriptBlockTextin
*extern uint*
1
ScriptBlockTextin
adjusttokenprivileges
1
ScriptBlockTextin
createremotethread
1
ScriptBlockTextin
createthread
1
ScriptBlockTextin
getdelegateforfunctionpointer
1
ScriptBlockTextin
getprocaddress
1
ScriptBlockTextin
ldrloaddll
1
ScriptBlockTextin
loadlibrary
1
ScriptBlockTextin
loadlibrarya
1
ScriptBlockTextin
loadlibraryex
1
ScriptBlockTextin
ntcreatethreadex
1
ScriptBlockTextin
openprocess
1
ScriptBlockTextin
openprocesstoken
1

Exclusions (15 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
Imagecontains
unknown process
1
Imageeq
c:\program files\vmware\vmware tools\vmtoolsd.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\program...
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\atbroker.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\csrss.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\explorer.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\openwith.exe
1
StartFunctioneq
EtwpNotificationThread
1
StartFunctioneq
GetCommandLineW
1
StartFunctioneq
LoadLibraryW
1
TargetImageeq
c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe
1
TargetImageeq
c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe
1
TargetImageeq
c:\windows\system32\spoolsv.exe
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)

Sigma 2 rules

Elastic 1 rule

Splunk 1 rule