Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Bypass User Account Control T1548.002

Tactic: Privilege Escalation

Adversaries may bypass UAC mechanisms to elevate process privileges on system. Windows User Account Control (UAC) allows a program to elevate its privileges (tracked as integrity levels ranging from low to high) to perform a task under administrator-level permissions, possibly by prompting the user for confirmation. The impact to the user ranges from denying the operation under high enforcement to allowing the user to perform the action if they are in the local administrators group and click through the prompt or allowing them to enter an administrator password to complete the action.

Events covered

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

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 106 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 (36 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
Image29ends_with 20, eq 5, contains 4, is_not_null 1, wildcard 1\dism.exe, \powershell.exe, \pwsh.exe, \werfault.exe, :\windows\system32\mmc.exe
EventID22eq 224688, 1, 4657, 13, 4103
ParentImage20ends_with 16, contains 3, eq 2, starts_with 1\dllhost.exe, cmd.exe, powershell.exe, powershell_ise.exe, :\program files
IntegrityLevel19eq 17, in 2High, System, Low, Medium
CommandLine17contains 11, ends_with 3, regex_match 2, eq 1, in 1, starts_with 1(?i)ms-settings\x5cshell\x5copen\x5ccommand.+, /enable-feature, /online, windowspowershellwebaccess, -nop -noni -c $x=$((gp hkcu:software\microsoft\windows...
Details16eq 11, contains 3, ends_with 2, is_not_null 1, regex_match 1, starts_with 1(Empty), 0x00000000, 0x00000001, DWORD (0x00000000), %SystemRoot%
TargetObject15ends_with 8, contains 7, wildcard 1software\\classes\\ms-settings\\shell\\open\\command, \appx82a6gwre4fdg3bt635tn5ctqjf8msdd2\shell\open\command, \environment\windir, \lowercaselongpath, \microsoft\security center\uacdisablenotify
parent_process_name12eq 8, in 2, match 2, ne 1(?i)\s+\x5c, BitlockerWizardElev.exe, CompMgmtLauncher.exe, EventVwr.exe, dllhost.exe
process_name12eq 5, in 2, match 2, regex_match 2, ne 1(?i)\s+\x5c, clipup.exe, (?i):\x5cwindows\x5csystem32\x5ccomputerdefaults\.exe, (?i)\x5ccomputerdefaults\.exe, bash.exe
event.type10eq 10start, change
ParentCommandLine9contains 4, eq 4, ends_with 1C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs -p -s Schedule, /processid:{12c21ea7-2eb8-4b55-9249-ac243da8c666}, /processid:{3e000d72-a845-4cd9-bd83-80c07c3b881f}, /processid:{3e5fc7f9-9a51-4367-9063-a120244fbec7}, /processid:{bd54c901-076b-434e-b6c7-17c531f4ab41}
TargetFilename9ends_with 8, starts_with 8, contains 1, eq 1, in 1c:\users\, .dll, \appdata\local\temp\, \appdata\local\temp\api-ms-win-core-kernel32-legacy-l1.dll, \appdata\local\temp\osksupport.dll
OriginalFileName8eq 7, ne 1powershell.exe, pwsh.dll, werfault.exe, akagi.exe, akagi64.exe
Type7eq 7
registry_path7contains 5, ends_with 2\\\\microsoft\\\\windows\\\\currentversion\\\\policies\\\..., \\appx82a6gwre4fdg3bt635tn5ctqjf8msdd2\\shell\\open\\command, \\currentversion\\policies\\system, \\environment\\cor_profiler_path, \\environment\\windir

Top indicator values (743 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
IntegrityLeveleq
High
1621
IntegrityLeveleq
System
1629
EventIDeq
4688
9313
EventIDeq
1
7237
EventIDeq
4657
617
EventIDeq
13
522
EventIDeq
4103
5105
EventIDeq
4104
5268
EventIDeq
12
29
event.typeeq
start
7606
event.typeeq
change
377
TargetFilenamestarts_with
c:\users\
611
Imageends_with
\dism.exe
36
Imageends_with
\powershell.exe
2182
Imageends_with
\pwsh.exe
2168
Imageends_with
\werfault.exe
29
ParentImageends_with
\dllhost.exe
37
CommandLinecontains
/enable-feature
22
CommandLinecontains
/online
24
CommandLinecontains
windowspowershellwebaccess
22
CommandLineregex_match
(?i)ms-settings\x5cshell\x5copen\x5ccommand.+
22
Detailseq
(Empty)
22
Detailseq
0x00000000
243
Detailseq
0x00000001
263
Detailseq
DWORD (0x00000000)
238
IntegrityLevelin
High
25
IntegrityLevelin
System
24
OriginalFileNameeq
powershell.exe
2120
OriginalFileNameeq
pwsh.dll
2112
ParentCommandLineeq
C:\Windows\system32\svchost.exe -k netsvcs -p -s Schedule
2

Exclusions (63 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
parent_process_nameregex_match
(?i):\x5c(Windows\x5cSystem32|Program\sFiles)
2
CommandLineends_with
\system32\msiexec.exe /V
1
Detailseq
%SystemRoot%
1
Detailseq
(Empty)
1
EventDatacontains
gc_service.exe
1
EventDatacontains
gc_worker.exe
1
Imageends_with
:\windows\system32\mmc.exe
1
Imageends_with
:\windows\system32\werfault.exe
1
Imageends_with
:\windows\syswow64\werfault.exe
1
Imageends_with
\conhost.exe
1
Imageends_with
\werfault.exe
1
Imageeq
?:\program files\wireguard\wireguard.exe
1
Imageeq
c:\windows\system32\clipup.exe
1
Imagewildcard
?:\windows\system32\mmc.exe
1
Imagewildcard
?:\windows\system32\werfault.exe
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 56 rules

Elastic 11 rules

Splunk 36 rules

Kusto 3 rules