T1679

Selective Exclusion

Windowsnothing on this site yetT1679 on attack.mitre.org

Adversaries may intentionally exclude certain files, folders, directories, file types, or system components from encryption or tampering during a ransomware or malicious payload execution. Some file extensions that adversaries may avoid encrypting include `.dll`, `.exe`, and `.lnk`.

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

how MITRE says to see it

Detection of Selective Exclusion

  • A process with no prior history or outside of known whitelisted tools initiates file or registry modifications to configure exclusion rules for antivirus, backup, or file-handling systems.

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.