T1055.003: T1055.003
Essential information
- MITRE technique ID
T1055.003- Confidence
- 100/100
- Revoked
- No
- Published
- 16/12/2025 19:37
- Modified
- 20/04/2026 12:51
- Author / Source
- The MITRE Corporation
Aliases
Thread Execution Hijacking
Platforms
windows
Description
Adversaries may inject malicious code into hijacked processes in order to evade process-based defenses as well as possibly elevate privileges. Thread Execution Hijacking is a method of executing arbitrary code in the address space of a separate live process.
Thread Execution Hijacking is commonly performed by suspending an existing process then unmapping/hollowing its memory, which can then be replaced with malicious code or the path to a DLL. A handle to an existing victim process is first created with native Windows API calls such as `OpenThread`. At this point the process can be suspended then written to, realigned to the injected code, and resumed via `SuspendThread `, `VirtualAllocEx`, `WriteProcessMemory`, `SetThreadContext`, then `ResumeThread` respectively.(Citation: Elastic Process Injection July 2017)
This is very similar to [Process Hollowing](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1055/012) but targets an existing process rather than creating a process in a suspended state.
Running code in the context of another process may allow access to the process's memory, system/network resources, and possibly elevated privileges. Execution via Thread Execution Hijacking may also evade detection from security products since the execution is masked under a legitimate process.
Kill chain phases
| Kill chain | Phase |
|---|---|
| mitre-attack | defense-evasion |
| mitre-attack | privilege-escalation |
Marking (TLP)
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