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MITRE ATT&CK® Technique

T1055.001: Dynamic-link Library Injection

Adversaries may inject dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) into processes in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. DLL injection is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

DLL injection is commonly performed by writing the path to a DLL in the virtual address space of the target process before loading the DLL by invoking a new thread. The write can be performed with native Windows API calls such as VirtualAllocEx and WriteProcessMemory, then invoked with CreateRemoteThread (which calls the LoadLibrary API responsible for loading the DLL). [1]

Variations of this method such as reflective DLL injection (writing a self-mapping DLL into a process) and memory module (map DLL when writing into process) overcome the address relocation issue as well as the additional APIs to invoke execution (since these methods load and execute the files in memory by manually preforming the function of LoadLibrary).[2][1]

Another variation of this method, often referred to as Module Stomping/Overloading or DLL Hollowing, may be leveraged to conceal injected code within a process. This method involves loading a legitimate DLL into a remote process then manually overwriting the module's AddressOfEntryPoint before starting a new thread in the target process.[3] This variation allows attackers to hide malicious injected code by potentially backing its execution with a legitimate DLL file on disk.[4]

Running code in the context of another process may allow access to the process's memory, system/network resources, and possibly elevated privileges. Execution via DLL injection may also evade detection from security products since the execution is masked under a legitimate process.

EnterpriseT1055.001Sub-techniqueObject v2.0Modified
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Glexia's Take · Automated analysis

Security context for executives and security teams

Automation confidenceMedium

T1055.001: Dynamic-link Library Injection describes Adversaries may inject dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) into processes in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. DLL injection is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process. DLL injection is commonly performed by writing the path to a DLL in the virtual address space of the target process before loading the DLL by invoking a new thread. The write can be performed with native Windows API calls such as VirtualAllocEx and WriteProcessMemory ...

Executive priority

T1055.001: Dynamic-link Library Injection is an official MITRE ATT&CK technique. Glexia treats it as defensive behavior context for prioritizing monitoring, control validation, and response planning without using the object by itself as an attribution claim.

Technical view

Security teams should validate T1055.001: Dynamic-link Library Injection by reviewing the official ATT&CK relationships, mapped tactics (stealth, privilege-escalation), supported platforms (Windows), and available local telemetry before making detection or mitigation decisions.

Likely telemetry

  • Official ATT&CK relationships and object metadata
  • Identity, privilege, and authentication events
  • Network, endpoint, and security-tool telemetry

Detection direction

  • Validate whether T1055.001: Dynamic-link Library Injection appears in your detection coverage and tabletop scenarios.
  • Use the object to align executive risk language with SOC, incident response, and detection engineering work.
  • Do not treat ATT&CK relationship context as attribution without corroborating evidence.

Mitigation priorities

  • Map the object to existing controls and identify missing telemetry or response ownership.
  • Prioritize mitigations that reduce exposure on the listed platforms and tactics.
  • Review adjacent ATT&CK relationships before changing policy, detections, or reporting language.
Additional notes and limits

Baseline Glexia take generated from the official MITRE ATT&CK STIX object, source hash, tactics, platforms, and detection fields. It is safe to replace with a richer model-generated take for the same source hash later.

This baseline take is source-grounded and schema-validated, but it does not include environment-specific telemetry, incident evidence, or threat-intelligence corroboration.

Generated from the cited source records. This long-tail analysis has not been individually reviewed by a named human.

Official MITRE ATT&CK definition

Dynamic-link Library Injection

Adversaries may inject dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) into processes in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. DLL injection is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.

DLL injection is commonly performed by writing the path to a DLL in the virtual address space of the target process before loading the DLL by invoking a new thread. The write can be performed with native Windows API calls such as VirtualAllocEx and WriteProcessMemory, then invoked with CreateRemoteThread (which calls the LoadLibrary API responsible for loading the DLL). [1]

Variations of this method such as reflective DLL injection (writing a self-mapping DLL into a process) and memory module (map DLL when writing into process) overcome the address relocation issue as well as the additional APIs to invoke execution (since these methods load and execute the files in memory by manually preforming the function of LoadLibrary).[2][1]

Another variation of this method, often referred to as Module Stomping/Overloading or DLL Hollowing, may be leveraged to conceal injected code within a process. This method involves loading a legitimate DLL into a remote process then manually overwriting the module's AddressOfEntryPoint before starting a new thread in the target process.[3] This variation allows attackers to hide malicious injected code by potentially backing its execution with a legitimate DLL file on disk.[4]

Running code in the context of another process may allow access to the process's memory, system/network resources, and possibly elevated privileges. Execution via DLL injection may also evade detection from security products since the execution is masked under a legitimate process.

View the same entry on attack.mitre.org (MITRE-hosted reference; in-page links above use the Glexia ATT&CK library.)

Glexia analysis

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.

ATT&CK relationship table

Related techniques

This mirrors the MITRE pattern of making group, software, campaign, and technique relationships scannable. Relationship notes come from mirrored ATT&CK relationship text when available.

1 rows
DomainIDNameRelationship / procedure
EnterpriseT1055Process InjectionThis object subtechnique of Process Injection.
Associated objects

Groups, software, and campaigns

GroupEnterprise

G0010: Turla

Turla is a cyber espionage threat group that has been attributed to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). They have compromised victims in over 50 countries since at least 2004, spanning a range of industries including government, embassies, military, education, research and pharmaceutical companies. Turla is known for conducting watering hole and spearphishing campaigns, and leveraging in-house tools and malware, such as Uroburos.[1][2][3][4][5]

GroupEnterprise

G1026: Malteiro

Malteiro is a financially motivated criminal group that is likely based in Brazil and has been active since at least November 2019. The group operates and distributes the Mispadu banking trojan via a Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) business model. Malteiro mainly targets victims throughout Latin America (particularly Mexico) and Europe (particularly Spain and Portugal).[1]

GroupEnterprise

G0065: Leviathan

Leviathan is a Chinese state-sponsored cyber espionage group that has been attributed to the Ministry of State Security's (MSS) Hainan State Security Department and an affiliated front company.[1] Active since at least 2009, Leviathan has targeted the following sectors: academia, aerospace/aviation, biomedical, defense industrial base, government, healthcare, manufacturing, maritime, and transportation across the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.[1][2][3][4]

GroupEnterprise

G0094: Kimsuky

Kimsuky is a Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)-based cyber espionage group that has been active since at least 2012. The group initially targeted South Korean government agencies, think tanks, and subject-matter experts in various fields. Its operations expanded to include the United Nations and organizations in the government, education, business services, and manufacturing sectors across the United States, Japan, Russia, and Europe. Kimsuky has focused collection on foreign policy and national security issues tied to the Korean Peninsula, nuclear policy, and sanctions. Kimsuky operations have overlapped with those of other North Korean state-sponsored cyber espionage actors as a result of ad hoc collaborations or other limited resource sharing.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Kimsuky was assessed to be responsible for the 2014 Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. compromise; other notable campaigns include Operation STOLEN PENCIL (2018), Operation Kabar Cobra (2019), and Operation Smoke Screen (2019).[7][8][9] In 2023, Kimsuky was observed using commercial large language models (LLMs) to assist with vulnerability research, scripting, social engineering and reconnaissance.[10]

DPRK threat actor cluster boundaries overlap in open source reporting, with some security researchers consolidating all attributed North Korean state-sponsored cyber activity under Lazarus Group, rather than tracking operationally distinct subgroups.

GroupEnterprise

G0032: Lazarus Group

Lazarus Group is a North Korean state-sponsored cyber threat group attributed to the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). [1] [2] Lazarus Group has been active since at least 2009 and is reportedly responsible for the November 2014 destructive wiper attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, identified by Novetta as part of Operation Blockbuster. Malware used by Lazarus Group correlates to other reported campaigns, including Operation Flame, Operation 1Mission, Operation Troy, DarkSeoul, and Ten Days of Rain.[3]

North Korea’s cyber operations have shown a consistent pattern of adaptation, forming and reorganizing units as national priorities shift. These units frequently share personnel, infrastructure, malware, and tradecraft, making it difficult to attribute specific operations with high confidence. Public reporting often uses “Lazarus Group” as an umbrella term for multiple North Korean cyber operators conducting espionage, destructive attacks, and financially motivated campaigns.[4][5][6]

GroupEnterprise

G0081: Tropic Trooper

Tropic Trooper is an unaffiliated threat group that has led targeted campaigns against targets in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. Tropic Trooper focuses on targeting government, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries and has been active since 2011.[1][2][3]

GroupEnterprise

G0092: TA505

TA505 is a cyber criminal group that has been active since at least 2014. TA505 is known for frequently changing malware, driving global trends in criminal malware distribution, and ransomware campaigns involving Clop.[1][2][3][4][5]

GroupEnterprise

G0102: Wizard Spider

Wizard Spider is a Russia-based financially motivated threat group originally known for the creation and deployment of TrickBot since at least 2016. Wizard Spider possesses a diverse arsenal of tools and has conducted ransomware campaigns against a variety of organizations, ranging from major corporations to hospitals.[1][2][3]

MalwareEnterprise

S0125: Remsec

Remsec is a modular backdoor that has been used by Strider and appears to have been designed primarily for espionage purposes. Many of its modules are written in Lua. [1]

Windows
MalwareEnterprise

S0089: BlackEnergy

BlackEnergy is a malware toolkit that has been used by both criminal and APT actors. It dates back to at least 2007 and was originally designed to create botnets for use in conducting Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, but its use has evolved to support various plug-ins. It is well known for being used during the confrontation between Georgia and Russia in 2008, as well as in targeting Ukrainian institutions. Variants include BlackEnergy 2 and BlackEnergy 3. [1]

Windows
ToolEnterprise

S0250: Koadic

Koadic is a Windows post-exploitation framework and penetration testing tool that is publicly available on GitHub. Koadic has several options for staging payloads and creating implants, and performs most of its operations using Windows Script Host.[1][2][3]

Windows
MalwareEnterprise

S0154: Cobalt Strike

Cobalt Strike is a commercial, full-featured, remote access tool that bills itself as “adversary simulation software designed to execute targeted attacks and emulate the post-exploitation actions of advanced threat actors”. Cobalt Strike’s interactive post-exploit capabilities cover the full range of ATT&CK tactics, all executed within a single, integrated system.[1]

In addition to its own capabilities, Cobalt Strike leverages the capabilities of other well-known tools such as Metasploit and Mimikatz.[1]

LinuxmacOSWindows
MalwareEnterprise

S0455: Metamorfo

Metamorfo is a Latin-American banking trojan operated by a Brazilian cybercrime group that has been active since at least April 2018. The group focuses on targeting banks and cryptocurrency services in Brazil and Mexico.[1][2]

Windows
CampaignEnterprise

C0015: C0015

C0015 was a ransomware intrusion during which the unidentified attackers used Bazar, Cobalt Strike, and Conti, along with other tools, over a 5 day period. Security researchers assessed the actors likely used the widely-circulated Conti ransomware playbook based on the observed pattern of activity and operator errors.[1]

Relationship explorer

All related ATT&CK context

subtechnique of · TechniqueT1055: Process InjectionEnterpriseuses · MalwareS1027: Heyoka BackdoorEnterpriseuses · MalwareS1018: Saint BotEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0082: EmissaryEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0125: RemsecEnterpriseuses · MalwareS1066: DarkTortillaEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0089: BlackEnergyEnterpriseuses · GroupG0010: TurlaEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0613: PS1Enterpriseuses · ToolS0250: KoadicEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0055: RARSTONEEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0154: Cobalt StrikeEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0461: SDBbotEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0455: MetamorfoEnterprisedetects · Detection StrategyDET0389: Behavioral Detection of DLL Injection via Windows APIEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0126: ComRATEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0273: SocksbotEnterpriseuses · MalwareS1039: BumblebeeEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0681: LizarEnterpriseuses · GroupG1026: MalteiroEnterpriseuses · MalwareS1044: FunnyDreamEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0449: MazeEnterpriseuses · MalwareS0167: MatryoshkaEnterpriseuses · ToolS0192: PupyEnterprise
Mitigations

Mitigation direction

MitigationEnterprise

M1040: Behavior Prevention on Endpoint

Behavior Prevention on Endpoint refers to the use of technologies and strategies to detect and block potentially malicious activities by analyzing the behavior of processes, files, API calls, and other endpoint events. Rather than relying solely on known signatures, this approach leverages heuristics, machine learning, and real-time monitoring to identify anomalous patterns indicative of an attack. This mitigation can be implemented through the following measures:

Suspicious Process Behavior:

- Implementation: Use Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) tools to monitor and block processes exhibiting unusual behavior, such as privilege escalation attempts. - Use Case: An attacker uses a known vulnerability to spawn a privileged process from a user-level application. The endpoint tool detects the abnormal parent-child process relationship and blocks the action.

Unauthorized File Access:

- Implementation: Leverage Data Loss Prevention (DLP) or endpoint tools to block processes attempting to access sensitive files without proper authorization. - Use Case: A process tries to read or modify a sensitive file located in a restricted directory, such as /etc/shadow on Linux or the SAM registry hive on Windows. The endpoint tool identifies this anomalous behavior and prevents it.

Abnormal API Calls:

- Implementation: Implement runtime analysis tools to monitor API calls and block those associated with malicious activities. - Use Case: A process dynamically injects itself into another process to hijack its execution. The endpoint detects the abnormal use of APIs like `OpenProcess` and `WriteProcessMemory` and terminates the offending process.

Exploit Prevention:

- Implementation: Use behavioral exploit prevention tools to detect and block exploits attempting to gain unauthorized access. - Use Case: A buffer overflow exploit is launched against a vulnerable application. The endpoint detects the anomalous memory write operation and halts the process.

Change history

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.

ATT&CK release
20.0
Object version
2.0
Created
Modified
Raw hash
d87e83b94499a772...
Imported snapshots across ATT&CK releases(3)
ReleaseBundle importedObject versionModifiedStatusRaw hash
20.02.0Current bundled87e83b94499…
19.22.0Older bundled87e83b94499…
19.12.0Older bundled87e83b94499…
Raw source

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.

Open mirrored raw JSONOpen MITRE-hosted copy
Source references

External references and citations

MITRE external references are preserved separately from Glexia analysis so citations remain traceable to their original source records.

  1. [1]
    Elastic Process Injection July 2017

    Hosseini, A. (2017, July 18). Ten Process Injection Techniques: A Technical Survey Of Common And Trending Process Injection Techniques. Retrieved December 7, 2017.

    Open source URL
  2. [2]
    Elastic HuntingNMemory June 2017

    Desimone, J. (2017, June 13). Hunting in Memory. Retrieved December 7, 2017.

    Open source URL
  3. [3]
    Module Stomping for Shellcode Injection

    Red Teaming Experiments. (n.d.). Module Stomping for Shellcode Injection. Retrieved July 14, 2022.

    Open source URL
  4. [4]
    Hiding Malicious Code with Module Stomping

    Aliz Hammond. (2019, August 15). Hiding Malicious Code with "Module Stomping": Part 1. Retrieved July 14, 2022.

    Open source URL
  5. [5]
    mitre-attackT1055.001
    Open source URL
Source and licensing

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