Sigma rule: Root Certificate Installed

Rule

Title

Root Certificate Installed

Status

deprecated

Level

medium

Author

oscd.community, @redcanary, Zach Stanford @svch0st

Date

2020/10/10

Modified

2023/03/05

File

deprecated/windows/proc_creation_win_root_certificate_installed.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Adversaries may install a root certificate on a compromised system to avoid warnings when connecting to adversary controlled web servers.

Log source

product

windows

category

process_creation

Detection

selection1:
    Image|endswith: '\certutil.exe'     # Example: certutil -addstore -f -user ROOT CertificateFileName.der
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - '-addstore'
        - 'root'
selection2:
    Image|endswith: '\CertMgr.exe'      # Example: CertMgr.exe /add CertificateFileName.cer /s /r localMachine root /all
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - '/add'
        - 'root'
condition: selection1 or selection2

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Help Desk or IT may need to manually add a corporate Root CA on occasion. Need to test if GPO push doesn't trigger FP

Tags

• attack.defense_evasion
• attack.t1553.004

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1553.004

Related rules

• 42821614-9264-4761-acfc-5772c3286f76 (derived)

References

• https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/f339e7da7d05f6057fdfcdd3742bfcf365fee2a9/atomics/T1553.004/T1553.004.md

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/deprecated/windows/proc_creation_win_root_certificate_installed.yml