consent.exe
Summary
User Account Control Consent UI (consent.exe) displays the UAC elevation prompt when a process requests administrator privileges. It is the process responsible for the "Do you want to allow this app to make changes?" dialog.
consent.exe is the 130th most commonly executed Windows program in EchoTrail's dataset, observed 161,674 times across enterprise environments. It typically runs from C:\Windows\System32 and it is most often launched by svchost.exe.
Behavior
Top Paths
- C:\Windows\System32100%
Top Hashes (SHA256)
- c20c24b91d57779f80b3f2a80e1674ae76750e6a4ce2d55ebc5f777e61cc56f568.02%
- 113813a699063ebf391d436a4efe0b6f95f81e12af773fabe5511b5ca08e189c14.56%
- 19fd0010da92b654d1ca270247061a39ea13c0a58529fd8257a97e2ef77949112.33%
- f9a2f9df4ba7387aca066abbca70b7742ba26c798c18aa5ebd315b4c2a7fb5ff2.18%
- b9711ed459bdbf39679f731ab67221068e0b6b8d8be88f22f4e89467ebac223b1.69%
- 86d8631c075400af09ecbfc531d64b187696d6aa277ad6d58e718e17ddcd46161.56%
- 56b2d516376328129132b815e22379ae8e7176825f059c9374a33cc844482e641.11%
- 8f112431143a22baaafb448eefd63bf90e7691c890ac69a296574fd07ba03ec61.02%
- 6df9bbee22b10f164b6087f005bc0f7c8dc648ad68b80e62c48e1c0d18531a540.73%
- f83a814b4371e5d9e70804ffe293c76ce1a11e77b05389de6388de8604e9fc350.7%
Process Ancestry
Top Grandparents
- services.exe100%
Top Parents
- svchost.exe99.99%
Top Children
- WerFault.exe56.86%
- svchost.exe29.41%
Rare or environment-specific process names are omitted from ancestry tables. Percentages are of all observed relationships.
Security Analysis
What does consent.exe normally do?
Located in C:\Windows\System32. Always launched by svchost.exe (Application Information service/AppInfo). Transient — runs only while the UAC dialog is displayed, then exits.
When is consent.exe suspicious?
Parent other than svchost.exe. Running from a non-standard path. Absence of consent.exe when UAC prompts should be occurring (may indicate UAC bypass). Spawning unusual child processes.
How do attackers abuse consent.exe?
UAC bypass techniques aim to avoid triggering consent.exe entirely, so its absence during elevation is more interesting than its presence. Some UAC bypass methods exploit auto-elevating executables that do not trigger the consent dialog.
Detection guidance
Focus on UAC bypass detection rather than consent.exe itself. Monitor for processes running elevated without a corresponding consent.exe execution. Detect known UAC bypass techniques (fodhelper.exe, eventvwr.exe, computerdefaults.exe auto-elevation abuse). Event ID 4688 with Token Elevation Type can help identify process elevation patterns.
False positive notes
Normal and expected whenever UAC prompts appear. Frequent in admin-heavy environments.
MITRE ATT&CK techniques
Related Processes
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Data from EchoTrail's dataset of ~346M Windows process executions. Last extracted 2026-08-04.