Process Injection - DLL Dynamic Link Library
Description
Process injection is a technique that injects malicious code into the address space of a legitimate process. Its goal is to leverage the target process’s permissions and credibility to execute malicious actions while evading security detections. By running code within a trusted process, malware can gain access to the target’s resources, enabling process hiding, privilege persistence, and defense evasion.
DLL injection is one of the main methods used for process injection. It forces the target process to load a malicious dynamic link library into its address space for code execution. Common DLL injection techniques include using CreateRemoteThread with LoadLibrary, the SetWindowsHookEx hook mechanism, QueueUserAPC asynchronous procedure calls, and manual DLL mapping.
These techniques typically involve inter-process memory operations, remote thread creation, and forced module loading—system-level behaviors widely used in malware persistence mechanisms, API hooking, and system monitoring. For enterprise security, timely identification of DLL injection activities is crucial to stop malicious code execution, prevent advanced persistent threats, and maintain system integrity.
Challenge Objective
Write detection rules to identify process injection activities carried out via DLL injection. Focus on inter-process access events, especially those involving cross-process operations with memory writing or thread creation privileges.
When writing detection queries, ensure the
Computerfield is included in the output for further validation.
Data Sample
Data source: Sysmon; sample data:
{ "CallTrace": "C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\ntdll.dll+9d9b4|C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\KERNELBASE.dll+28d0e|C:\\Users\\admin\\Desktop\\InjectProc.exe+148d|C:\\Users\\admin\\Desktop\\InjectProc.exe+51be|C:\\Users\\admin\\Desktop\\InjectProc.exe+5c19|C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\KERNEL32.DLL+17374|C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\ntdll.dll+4cc91", "Channel": "Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational", "Computer": "DESKTOP-LM28JJ8", "EventId": 10, "GrantedAccess": "0x1fffff", "RuleName": "-", "SourceImage": "C:\\Users\\admin\\Desktop\\InjectProc.exe", "SourceProcessGUID": "{769c9af7-6e0a-6894-4a08-000000000b00}", "SourceProcessId": "10876", "SourceThreadId": "2992", "SourceUser": "DESKTOP-LM28JJ8\\admin", "SystemTime": "2025-08-07T09:12:42.5277418Z", "TargetImage": "C:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe", "TargetProcessGUID": "{769c9af7-6df2-6894-3f08-000000000b00}", "TargetProcessId": "10456", "TargetUser": "DESKTOP-LM28JJ8\\admin", "UtcTime": "2025-08-07 09:12:42.522",}References
Fields
No fields found