T1013

Port Monitors

Persistence Privilege Escalation

Description

A port monitor can be set through the (Citation: AddMonitor) API call to set a DLL to be loaded at startup. (Citation: AddMonitor) This DLL can be located in <code>C:\Windows\System32</code> and will be loaded by the print spooler service, spoolsv.exe, on boot. The spoolsv.exe process also runs under SYSTEM level permissions. (Citation: Bloxham) Alternatively, an arbitrary DLL can be loaded if permissions allow writing a fully-qualified pathname for that DLL to <code>HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors</code>.The Registry key contains entries for the following:* Local Port * Standard TCP/IP Port * USB Monitor * WSD PortAdversaries can use this technique to load malicious code at startup that will persist on system reboot and execute as SYSTEM.

Platforms

Windows

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