AN1193: Analytic 1193
Processes accessing raw logical drives (e.g., \.\C:) to bypass file system protections or directly manipulate data structures.
Analyst context for executives and security teams
This analytic points to a high-risk Windows behavior: a process opening a raw logical drive such as \\.\C: instead of working through normal file paths. For security leaders, the importance is not the string itself; it is that raw drive access can indicate attempts to bypass normal file system protections or manipulate data structures directly. That makes it relevant to incident response readiness, endpoint visibility, and resilience planning because normal file-level logging may not fully explain what occurred.
Executive priority
Prioritize validating whether Windows endpoint telemetry can show which processes access raw logical drives, under what account context, and on which systems. This behavior can matter during investigations where file-system controls or audit trails may be bypassed, so leaders should ask whether SOC and IR teams have enough evidence to distinguish legitimate administrative, backup, forensic, or storage tooling from suspicious direct disk access.
Technical view
For Windows coverage, detection engineers should focus on process activity that opens raw logical drive paths such as \\.\C:. Because the ATT&CK object provides no official detection logic, tactics, or relationships, teams should validate local telemetry sources and build environment-specific baselines. Useful triage dimensions include process name and path, command line where available, parent process, user context, host role, frequency, and whether the process is expected to perform disk, backup, forensic, encryption, or storage-management functions.
Likely telemetry
- Windows endpoint process creation telemetry
- Endpoint detection and response process and file/device access events
- Command-line and parent/child process context
- User/account context for the accessing process
- Host role and asset criticality metadata
Detection direction
- Validate that telemetry captures process access to raw logical drive device paths, not only normal file paths.
- Baseline legitimate raw drive access by approved backup, disk, forensic, security, and storage tools to reduce false positives.
- Prioritize alerts where unusual or unapproved processes access \\.\C: or similar logical drive paths, especially on high-value Windows systems.
- Correlate raw drive access with process lineage, account context, host role, and timing to support incident triage.
- Document blind spots where endpoint logging cannot show low-level device access or where file-centric monitoring would miss the behavior.
Mitigation priorities
- Inventory legitimate software that requires raw logical drive access and define ownership, expected systems, and expected execution patterns.
- Restrict administrative privileges and tool execution paths where business operations allow.
- Use application control or similar policy enforcement to limit unapproved utilities from performing sensitive disk-level activity, where feasible.
- Ensure incident response playbooks include collection of process, account, and endpoint context for suspected raw drive access.
- Review coverage evidence periodically as part of Windows endpoint monitoring and compliance readiness.
Analyst notes and limits
This is a detection analytic object, not a full ATT&CK technique entry. The supplied description is narrow and Windows-specific: processes accessing raw logical drives such as \\.\C: to bypass file system protections or directly manipulate data structures. No tactic, official detection text, mitigations, or relationship context were supplied, so local environment baselining is essential.
The source object does not provide detection logic, data components, related techniques, procedures, adversary use, or mitigations. This take therefore avoids claims about active exploitation, attribution, impact, or guaranteed detectability. Applicability is limited to the supplied Windows platform context.
Analytic 1193
Processes accessing raw logical drives (e.g., \.\C:) to bypass file system protections or directly manipulate data structures.
How security teams should use this page
Treat this object as behavior context, not an attribution claim. Validate the related groups, software, data sources, and mitigations against official ATT&CK relationships and your own telemetry before making control-coverage decisions.
All related ATT&CK context
No relationships are available in the current normalized data for this object.
Object version and sync metadata
The fields below describe the current mirrored snapshot. When Glexia retains multiple ATT&CK source imports, you can open the table to compare the same object across releases (hashes and MITRE timestamps). For MITRE’s own release notes and roadmap, see ATT&CK resources — Updates .
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases (1)
| Release | Bundle imported | Object version | Modified | Status | Raw hash |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | 1.0 | Current bundle | d3a99951d286… |
Mirrored ATT&CK source object
The raw object is retained through the mirrored ATT&CK source bundle and object hash. The raw endpoint returns the exact object from the mirrored bundle when available.
External references and citations
MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.
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mitre-attack AN1193Open source URL
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