Behavioral Detection of Asynchronous Procedure Call (APC) Injection via Remote Thread Queuing

ID: DET0100
Domains: Enterprise
Analytics: AN0277
Version: 1.0
Created: 21 October 2025
Last Modified: 21 October 2025

Analytics

AN0277

Detects malicious injection behavior involving memory allocation, remote thread queuing via APC (e.g., QueueUserAPC), and altered thread context within another live process to execute unauthorized code under legitimate context.

Log Sources
Data Component Name Channel
Process Access (DC0035) WinEventLog:Sysmon EventCode=10
Process Modification (DC0020) WinEventLog:Sysmon EventCode=8
OS API Execution (DC0021) etw:Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Process APCQueueOperations
Process Creation (DC0032) WinEventLog:Sysmon EventCode=1
Mutable Elements
Field Description
APCTargetProcessList Processes that are rarely or never valid targets for legitimate APC queuing (e.g., lsass.exe, winlogon.exe)
ThreadQueueDepthThreshold The number of APCs queued within a short time window that could signal abuse
TimeWindow Expected latency between memory allocation and thread execution through APC
UserContextSensitivity Used to filter based on expected vs unexpected user to target process pairings