CAPEC-579 Replace Winlogon Helper DLL

CAPEC ID: 579

CAPEC-579 Metadata

Likelihood of Attack

Medium

Typical Severity

Medium

Overview

Summary

Winlogon is a part of Windows that performs logon actions. In Windows systems prior to Windows Vista, a registry key can be modified that causes Winlogon to load a DLL on startup. Adversaries may take advantage of this feature to load adversarial code at startup.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites listed.

Potential Solutions / Mitigations

Changes to registry entries in "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\Winlogon\Notify" that do not correlate with known software, patch cycles, etc are suspicious. New DLLs written to System32 which do not correlate with known good software or patching may be suspicious.

Related Weaknesses (CWE)

CWE ID Description
CWE-15 External Control of System or Configuration Setting

Related CAPECs

CAPEC ID Description
CAPEC-542 An adversary develops targeted malware that takes advantage of a known vulnerability in an organizational information technology environment. The malware crafted for these attacks is based specifically on information gathered about the technology environment. Successfully executing the malware enables an adversary to achieve a wide variety of negative technical impacts.

Taxonomy Mappings

Taxonomy: ATTACK

Entry ID Entry Name
1547.004 Boot or Logon Autostart Execution: Winlogon helper DLL

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