T1055.002: Portable Executable Injection
View on MITRE ATT&CK | T1055.002 |
---|---|
Tactic(s) | Privilege Escalation, Defense Evasion |
Data from MITRE ATT&CK®:
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. (Citation: Elastic Process Injection July 2017)
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.
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Cyber Threat Graph Context
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Reporting on this Technique
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Mitigations for this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Mitigations
How to detect this technique
MITRE ATT&CK Data Components
Process Access (Process)
Opening of a process by another process, typically to read memory of the target process (ex: Sysmon EID 10)Process 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)OS API Execution (Process)
Operating system function/method calls executed by a processControl Validation Tests for this Technique
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SP800-53 Controls
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