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Global Accelerated Learning • Est. 1999
Glossary Term Process Hollowing

Training Camp • Cybersecurity Glossary

What is Process Hollowing?

Process hollowing replaces a suspended legitimate process's memory image with malicious code to masquerade as trusted, MITRE ATTACK T1055.012.

Glossary > Threats, Malware & Attacks > Process Hollowing

Understanding Process Hollowing

Process hollowing, also known as RunPE, is a code injection and defense evasion technique in which an attacker launches a legitimate process in a suspended state, unmaps (hollows out) its original executable image from memory, and replaces it with malicious code before resuming execution. This lets malware run under the guise of a trusted process, evading detection and bypassing application allowlisting. It is cataloged in MITRE ATTACK as technique T1055.012.

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