fontdrvhost.exe
Summary
Usermode Font Driver Host - isolates font rendering in a sandboxed process to protect the kernel from font parsing vulnerabilities.
fontdrvhost.exe is the 329th most commonly executed Windows program in EchoTrail's dataset, observed 27,457 times across enterprise environments. It typically runs from C:\Windows\System32 and it is most often launched by winlogon.exe.
Behavior
Top Paths
- C:\Windows\System32100%
Top Hashes (SHA256)
- 12fb40b97f75a0eab698a0b011f4f825400c33e2f9781299dd67561efa9af2059.53%
- 07de02fe96e2b60f02b842d5c5a8dcfa95534a69c58b02879856e3bb81bd87de9.26%
- 38c9b4923da2a36cb8a38982d6a03010f1e9449457c4c9dfc979d5b913e6ec647.26%
- 9d06774cd6b7ee825e160ed2e6370d0abbaf9350287c9164bf95a422333687676.47%
- f411dd017699e0cd1b47979f10686dd6677bf35138c65ecac6e2c814890f1f965.12%
- a2c9b9737235ecea78d184f302a4d35c518482b8b584c371ba3cd84bc1b2ae8a3.84%
- ad6731a03531b1214e9fbd8afdf925ebf8adb490e79127729f0312316add32073.83%
- f307c599afd1f0fa416e3ca8c158a1c7e811d3b2bac5bd624bb62ae66f72c0f83.66%
- 1ad5ff81e6ad7da19f2a707c532185693b780debeff2a6624aa5be8f67f8db8a3.21%
- 61106ca08778b8e30e5e37ac2eb6876c295f00cf37d1365ff49f7c3513abad503.03%
Process Ancestry
Top Grandparents
- smss.exe96.74%
- svchost.exe1.89%
- fontdrvhost.exe0.67%
- WUDFHost.exe0.23%
- winlogon.exe0.18%
- LogonUI.exe0.12%
- dwm.exe0.07%
- hmpalert.exe0.01%
- igfxCUIService.exe0.01%
Top Parents
- winlogon.exe68.51%
- wininit.exe31.49%
- MicrosoftEdgeCP.exe<0.01%
Top Children
- csrss.exe50%
- wininit.exe35.45%
- winlogon.exe14.55%
Rare or environment-specific process names are omitted from ancestry tables. Percentages are of all observed relationships.
Security Analysis
What does fontdrvhost.exe normally do?
Runs from %SystemRoot%\System32\fontdrvhost.exe. Typically two instances: one for Session 0 and one per interactive session.
When is fontdrvhost.exe suspicious?
Running from non-System32 path. Making network connections. Spawning child processes.
Detection guidance
Verify path is System32. This process should be quiet with no network activity or child processes.
Related Processes
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Data from EchoTrail's dataset of ~346M Windows process executions. Last extracted 2026-08-04.