T1547.010sub-technique of T1547 Boot or Logon Autostart Execution

Port Monitors

Windowsnothing on this site yetT1547.010 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may use port monitors to run an adversary supplied DLL during system boot for persistence or privilege escalation. A port monitor can be set through the `AddMonitor` API call to set a DLL to be loaded at startup. This DLL can be located in `C:\Windows\System32` and will be loaded and run by the print spooler service, `spoolsv.exe`, under SYSTEM level permissions on boot.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

If this is happening now

Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.

Playbook for this stage

Suspicious execution on an endpoint

An EDR alert, an unexplained process, or a user reporting something odd.

Playbook for this stage

Cloud account compromise

Impossible travel, an unrecognised inbox rule, or a reported invoice-fraud attempt.

how MITRE says to see it

Detection Strategy for T1547.010 – Port Monitor DLL Persistence via spoolsv.exe (Windows)

Detects suspicious registry modifications under `HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Monitors\*\Driver`, DLL loads by `spoolsv.exe` of non-standard or unsigned modules, and abnormal usage of the `AddMonitor` API by non-installation processes.

the rest of T1547

T1547.001 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder · 8 on this site
T1547.002 Authentication Package · not covered yet
T1547.003 Time Providers · not covered yet
T1547.004 Winlogon Helper DLL · not covered yet
T1547.005 Security Support Provider · not covered yet
T1547.006 Kernel Modules and Extensions · not covered yet
T1547.007 Re-opened Applications · not covered yet
T1547.008 LSASS Driver · not covered yet
T1547.009 Shortcut Modification · not covered yet
T1547.012 Print Processors · not covered yet
T1547.013 XDG Autostart Entries · not covered yet
T1547.014 Active Setup · not covered yet
T1547.015 Login Items · not covered yet

The description, detection analytics and mitigations are reproduced from MITRE ATT&CK, version 19.2, under its terms of use. The checklists, hunts, labs and everything else linked here are this site’s.