| name | hunting-for-process-injection-techniques |
| description | Detect process injection techniques (T1055) including CreateRemoteThread, process hollowing, and DLL injection via Sysmon Event IDs 8 and 10 and EDR process telemetry |
| domain | cybersecurity |
| subdomain | threat-hunting |
| tags | ["process-injection","t1055","sysmon","createremotethread","dll-injection","edr","threat-hunting"] |
| version | 1.0 |
| author | mahipal |
| license | Apache-2.0 |
| d3fend_techniques | ["Executable Denylisting","Execution Isolation","File Metadata Consistency Validation","Content Format Conversion","File Content Analysis"] |
| nist_csf | ["DE.CM-01","DE.AE-02","DE.AE-07","ID.RA-05"] |
Hunting for Process Injection Techniques
Overview
Process injection (MITRE ATT&CK T1055) allows adversaries to execute code in the address space of another process, enabling defense evasion and privilege escalation. This skill detects injection techniques via Sysmon Event ID 8 (CreateRemoteThread), Event ID 10 (ProcessAccess with suspicious access rights), and analysis of source-target process relationships to distinguish legitimate from malicious injection.
When to Use
- When investigating security incidents that require hunting for process injection techniques
- When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
- When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
- When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques
Detection Gaps & Validation
- Evasions that produce NO Sysmon EID 8: thread hijacking (
SetThreadContext), APC injection (QueueUserAPC/NtQueueApcThread, early-bird), mapping injection (NtMapViewOfSection), and process hollowing (NtUnmapViewOfSection + WriteProcessMemory) all skip CreateRemoteThread. They surface only as EID 10 ProcessAccess with PROCESS_VM_WRITE|PROCESS_VM_OPERATION|PROCESS_CREATE_THREAD.
- Userland-hook bypass: indirect/direct syscalls and unhooked NTDLL defeat EDR inline hooks, leaving little or no telemetry — corroborate with EID 7 (ImageLoad of unbacked/floating modules) and kernel ETW.
- EID 10 noise: CSRSS, lsass, AV/EDR, and debuggers legitimately open high-access handles. Tune to cross-process opens where GrantedAccess masks
0x1F0FFF/0x1FFFFF AND the source is unsigned or unusual; treat 0x1000/0x1400 read-only as benign.
- Validate the hunt fires: run Atomic Red Team T1055.001 (process hollowing), T1055.002, and
mavinject.exe APC, then confirm EID 8 GrantedAccess and EID 10 access masks are captured.
- FP tuning: allowlist known injector→target pairs (e.g., MsMpEng.exe, vmtoolsd) by signer, not by image name alone.
Prerequisites
- Sysmon installed with Event IDs 8 and 10 enabled
- Process creation logs (Sysmon Event ID 1 or Windows 4688)
- Python 3.8+ with standard library
- JSON-formatted Sysmon event logs
Steps
