327. Adversaries Use Shell Icon Overlay Handlers for Persistence

Hello everyone!

Let's look at another not common persistence mechanism, which involves abusing Shell Icon Overlay handlers and registry modification.

Advanced techniques are for advanced adversaries, so today we'll look at Lazarus (or Lazer Werewolf). As part of persistence, the threat actors modified the following registry key:

SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers

This allows the adversary to abuse the Shell Icon Overlay handler to load the payload each time the user logs in.

So it's another notable registry key for monitoring:

event_type: "registryvaluesetwin"

AND

reg_key_path: "ShellIconOverlayIdentifiers"

See you tomorrow!

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