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Registry Persistence via AppInit DLLs Modification

Description

'Adversaries may establish persistence and/or elevate privileges by executing malicious content triggered by AppInit DLLs loaded into processes. Dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) that are specified in the AppInit_DLLs value in the Registry keys HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows are loaded by user32.dll into every process that loads user32.dll. In practice this is nearly every program, since user32.dll is a very common library. Ref: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/010/'
Rule type
Scheduled
Version
1.0.3
Declared status
Available
Query frequency
1h
Query period
1h
Trigger
gt 0

Declared MITRE coverage

Declared sources

Metadata from the source file. No dependencies inferred from KQL.

Connectors

Data types

KQL query

Original query, unchanged.

Event
| where EventLog =~ "Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational" and EventID in (13)
| parse EventData with * 'TargetObject">' TargetObject "<" * 'Details">' Details "<" * 
| where TargetObject has "\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Windows\\AppInit_DLLs"
| summarize StartTimeUtc = min(TimeGenerated), EndTimeUtc = max(TimeGenerated) by EventID, Computer, TargetObject, Details
| extend HostName = iif(Computer has '.',substring(Computer,0,indexof(Computer,'.')),Computer) , DnsDomain = iif(Computer has '.',substring(Computer,indexof(Computer,'.')+1),'')

Declared entities

RegistryKeyHost

Related content

Links established from declared identifiers and solution manifests.

Source provenance

GitHub

Displayed values come from files in Azure/Azure-Sentinel. They describe the published template, not your workspace configuration.

Source identifier
9367dff0-941d-44e2-8875-cb48570c7add
Additional source files 3Solutions/Endpoint Threat Protection Essentials/Analytic Rules/RegistryPersistenceViaAppInt_DLLsModification.yamlsource ↗Detections/SecurityEvent/RegistryPersistenceViaAppInt_DLLsModification.yamlmigration-note ↗Solutions/Endpoint Threat Protection Essentials/Data/Solution_EndpointThreatProtectionEssentials.jsonsolution-membership ↗
GSTEP / CATALOG TRACKING

Added to catalog : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC
Last change observed : 16 Sept 2026 · 05:49 UTC

GSTEP sync dates, separate from the source content’s publication dates.