T1055.003: Thread Execution Hijacking
| View on MITRE ATT&CK | T1055.003 |
|---|---|
| Tactic(s) | Privilege Escalation, Defense Evasion |
| Associated CAPEC Patterns | Hijacking a Privileged Thread of Execution (CAPEC-30) |
Data from MITRE ATT&CK®:
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.
Thread Execution Hijacking is commonly performed by suspending an existing process then unmapping/hollowing its memory, which can then be replaced with malicious code or the path to a DLL. A handle to an existing victim process is first created with native Windows API calls such as OpenThread. At this point the process can be suspended then written to, realigned to the injected code, and resumed via SuspendThread , VirtualAllocEx, WriteProcessMemory, SetThreadContext, then ResumeThread respectively.(Citation: Elastic Process Injection July 2017)
This is very similar to Process Hollowing but targets an existing process rather than creating a process in a suspended state.
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 Thread Execution Hijacking may also evade detection from security products since the execution is masked under a legitimate process.
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Mitigations for this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Mitigations
How to detect this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Data Components
OS API Execution (Process)
Operating system function/method calls executed by a processProcess Modification (Process)
Changes made to a process, or its contents, typically to write and/or execute code in the memory of the target process (ex: Sysmon EID 8)Process Access (Process)
Opening of a process by another process, typically to read memory of the target process (ex: Sysmon EID 10)Control Validation Tests for this Technique
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Sigma Detections for this Technique
SP800-53 Controls
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