T1574.013sub-technique of T1574 Hijack Execution Flow

KernelCallbackTable

Windowsnothing on this site yetT1574.013 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may abuse the `KernelCallbackTable` of a process to hijack its execution flow in order to run their own payloads. The `KernelCallbackTable` can be found in the Process Environment Block (PEB) and is initialized to an array of graphic functions available to a GUI process once `user32.dll` is loaded.

MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

If this is happening now

1

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

how MITRE says to see it

Detection Strategy for Hijack Execution Flow through the KernelCallbackTable on Windows.

  • Unexpected modification of the KernelCallbackTable in a process’s PEB followed by invocation of modified callback functions (e.g., fnCOPYDATA) through Windows messages.

what reduces it

  • M1040 Behavior Prevention on Endpoint. Some endpoint security solutions can be configured to block some types of behaviors related to process injection/memory tampering based on common sequences of indicators (ex: execution of specific API functions).

the rest of T1574

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.