Suspicious WMI Image Load from MS Office

 1[metadata]
 2creation_date = "2020/11/17"
 3integration = ["endpoint", "windows"]
 4maturity = "production"
 5updated_date = "2024/10/15"
 6min_stack_version = "8.14.0"
 7min_stack_comments = "Breaking change at 8.14.0 for the Windows Integration."
 8
 9[rule]
10author = ["Elastic"]
11description = """
12Identifies a suspicious image load (wmiutils.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate
13adversarial activity where child processes are spawned via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This technique can
14be used to execute code and evade traditional parent/child processes spawned from Microsoft Office products.
15"""
16from = "now-9m"
17index = ["winlogbeat-*", "logs-endpoint.events.library-*", "logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*", "endgame-*"]
18language = "eql"
19license = "Elastic License v2"
20name = "Suspicious WMI Image Load from MS Office"
21references = [
22    "https://medium.com/threatpunter/detecting-adversary-tradecraft-with-image-load-event-logging-and-eql-8de93338c16",
23]
24risk_score = 21
25rule_id = "891cb88e-441a-4c3e-be2d-120d99fe7b0d"
26setup = """## Setup
27
28If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2,
29events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until version 8.2.
30Hence for this rule to work effectively, users will need to add a custom ingest pipeline to populate
31`event.ingested` to @timestamp.
32For more details on adding a custom ingest pipeline refer - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/fleet/current/data-streams-pipeline-tutorial.html
33"""
34severity = "low"
35tags = [
36    "Domain: Endpoint",
37    "OS: Windows",
38    "Use Case: Threat Detection",
39    "Tactic: Execution",
40    "Data Source: Elastic Endgame",
41    "Data Source: Elastic Defend",
42    "Data Source: Sysmon",
43]
44timestamp_override = "event.ingested"
45type = "eql"
46
47query = '''
48any where host.os.type == "windows" and
49 (event.category : ("library", "driver") or (event.category == "process" and event.action : "Image loaded*")) and
50  process.name : ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE", "POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and
51  (?dll.name : "wmiutils.dll" or file.name : "wmiutils.dll")
52'''
53
54
55[[rule.threat]]
56framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"
57[[rule.threat.technique]]
58id = "T1047"
59name = "Windows Management Instrumentation"
60reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1047/"
61
62
63[rule.threat.tactic]
64id = "TA0002"
65name = "Execution"
66reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0002/"