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Remote Desktop File Opened from Suspicious Path
Identifies attempts to open a remote desktop file from suspicious paths. Adversaries may abuse RDP files for initial access.
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Identifies the use of the AWS Systems Manager (SSM)
SendCommand
API with the eitherAWS-RunShellScript
orAWS-RunPowerShellScript
parameters. TheSendCommand
API call allows users to execute commands on EC2 instances using the SSM service. Adversaries may use this technique to execute commands on EC2 instances without the need for SSH or RDP access. This behavior may indicate an adversary attempting to execute commands on an EC2 instance for malicious purposes. This is a New Terms rule that only flags when this behavior is observed for the first time on a host in the last 7 days.
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Identifies a process termination event quickly followed by the deletion of its executable file. Malware tools and other non-native files dropped or created on a system by an adversary may leave traces to indicate to what occurred. Removal of these files can occur during an intrusion, or as part of a post-intrusion process to minimize the adversary's footprint.
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AdFind Command Activity
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Discovery Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·This rule detects the Active Directory query tool, AdFind.exe. AdFind has legitimate purposes, but it is frequently leveraged by threat actors to perform post-exploitation Active Directory reconnaissance. The AdFind tool has been observed in Trickbot, Ryuk, Maze, and FIN6 campaigns. For Winlogbeat, this rule requires Sysmon.
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Identifies instances of lower privilege accounts enumerating Administrator accounts or groups using built-in Windows tools.
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An adversary can use the Windows command line debugging utility cdb.exe to execute commands or shellcode. This rule looks for those instances and where the cdb.exe binary is outside of the normal WindowsKit installation paths.
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IIS HTTP Logging Disabled
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies when Internet Information Services (IIS) HTTP Logging is disabled on a server. An attacker with IIS server access via a webshell or other mechanism can disable HTTP Logging as an effective anti-forensics measure.
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ImageLoad via Windows Update Auto Update Client
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies abuse of the Windows Update Auto Update Client (wuauclt.exe) to load an arbitrary DLL. This behavior is used as a defense evasion technique to blend-in malicious activity with legitimate Windows software.
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Remote Desktop Enabled in Windows Firewall by Netsh
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the network shell utility (netsh.exe) to enable inbound Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections in the Windows Firewall.
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Service DACL Modification via sc.exe
Identifies DACL modifications to deny access to a service, making it unstoppable, or hide it from system and users.
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Suspicious CertUtil Commands
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious commands being used with certutil.exe. CertUtil is a native Windows component which is part of Certificate Services. CertUtil is often abused by attackers to live off the land for stealthier command and control or data exfiltration.
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Windows Firewall Disabled via PowerShell
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies when the Windows Firewall is disabled using PowerShell cmdlets, which can help attackers evade network constraints, like internet and network lateral communication restrictions.
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Detects attempts to enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux using Microsoft Dism utility. Adversaries may enable and use WSL for Linux to avoid detection.
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Adding Hidden File Attribute via Attrib
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Persistence Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Adversaries can add the 'hidden' attribute to files to hide them from the user in an attempt to evade detection.
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Clearing Windows Console History
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies when a user attempts to clear console history. An adversary may clear the command history of a compromised account to conceal the actions undertaken during an intrusion.
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Clearing Windows Event Logs
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempts to clear or disable Windows event log stores using Windows wevetutil command. This is often done by attackers in an attempt to evade detection or destroy forensic evidence on a system.
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Code Signing Policy Modification Through Built-in tools
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempts to disable/modify the code signing policy through system native utilities. Code signing provides authenticity on a program, and grants the user with the ability to check whether the program has been tampered with. By allowing the execution of unsigned or self-signed code, threat actors can craft and execute malicious code.
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Delete Volume USN Journal with Fsutil
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the fsutil.exe to delete the volume USNJRNL. This technique is used by attackers to eliminate evidence of files created during post-exploitation activities.
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Disable Windows Event and Security Logs Using Built-in Tools
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempts to disable EventLog via the logman Windows utility, PowerShell, or auditpol. This is often done by attackers in an attempt to evade detection on a system.
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Disabling Windows Defender Security Settings via PowerShell
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the Set-MpPreference PowerShell command to disable or weaken certain Windows Defender settings.
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Identifies the execution of wbadmin to access the NTDS.dit file in a domain controller. Attackers with privileges from groups like Backup Operators can abuse the utility to perform credential access and compromise the domain.
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Windows Defender Exclusions Added via PowerShell
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies modifications to the Windows Defender configuration settings using PowerShell to add exclusions at the folder directory or process level.
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Wireless Credential Dumping using Netsh Command
Nov 7, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Credential Access Tactic: Discovery Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempts to dump Wireless saved access keys in clear text using the Windows built-in utility Netsh.
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Suspicious Lsass Process Access
Identifies access attempts to LSASS handle, this may indicate an attempt to dump credentials from Lsass memory.
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Deleting Backup Catalogs with Wbadmin
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Impact Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the wbadmin.exe to delete the backup catalog. Ransomware and other malware may do this to prevent system recovery.
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Enumerating Domain Trusts via DSQUERY.EXE
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Discovery Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the use of dsquery.exe for domain trust discovery purposes. Adversaries may use this command-line utility to enumerate trust relationships that may be used for Lateral Movement opportunities in Windows multi-domain forest environments.
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Windows Component Object Model (COM) is an inter-process communication (IPC) component of the native Windows application programming interface (API) that enables interaction between software objects or executable code. Xwizard can be used to run a COM object created in registry to evade defensive counter measures.
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Execution via MSSQL xp_cmdshell Stored Procedure
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies execution via MSSQL xp_cmdshell stored procedure. Malicious users may attempt to elevate their privileges by using xp_cmdshell, which is disabled by default, thus, it's important to review the context of it's use.
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Detects the usage of gpresult.exe to query group policy objects. Attackers may query group policy objects during the reconnaissance phase after compromising a system to gain a better understanding of the active directory environment and possible methods to escalate privileges or move laterally.
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Modification of Boot Configuration
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Impact Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of bcdedit.exe to delete boot configuration data. This tactic is sometimes used as by malware or an attacker as a destructive technique.
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Mounting Hidden or WebDav Remote Shares
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Lateral Movement Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the use of net.exe to mount a WebDav or hidden remote share. This may indicate lateral movement or preparation for data exfiltration.
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Peripheral Device Discovery
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Discovery Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the Windows file system utility (fsutil.exe) to gather information about attached peripheral devices and components connected to a computer system.
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Persistence via WMI Event Subscription
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·An adversary can use Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to install event filters, providers, consumers, and bindings that execute code when a defined event occurs. Adversaries may use the capabilities of WMI to subscribe to an event and execute arbitrary code when that event occurs, providing persistence on a system.
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Privilege Escalation via Named Pipe Impersonation
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies a privilege escalation attempt via named pipe impersonation. An adversary may abuse this technique by utilizing a framework such Metasploit's meterpreter getsystem command.
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ScreenConnect Server Spawning Suspicious Processes
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious processes being spawned by the ScreenConnect server process (ScreenConnect.Service.exe). This activity may indicate exploitation activity or access to an existing web shell backdoor.
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Service Control Spawned via Script Interpreter
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies Service Control (sc.exe) spawning from script interpreter processes to create, modify, or start services. This can potentially indicate an attempt to elevate privileges or maintain persistence.
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Volume Shadow Copy Deleted or Resized via VssAdmin
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Impact Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of vssadmin.exe for shadow copy deletion or resizing on endpoints. This commonly occurs in tandem with ransomware or other destructive attacks.
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Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via WMIC
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Impact Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of wmic.exe for shadow copy deletion on endpoints. This commonly occurs in tandem with ransomware or other destructive attacks.
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Credential Acquisition via Registry Hive Dumping
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Credential Access Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempts to export a registry hive which may contain credentials using the Windows reg.exe tool.
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Identifies use of aspnet_regiis to decrypt Microsoft IIS connection strings. An attacker with Microsoft IIS web server access via a webshell or alike can decrypt and dump any hardcoded connection strings, such as the MSSQL service account password using aspnet_regiis command.
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Identifies a copy operation of the Active Directory Domain Database (ntds.dit) or Security Account Manager (SAM) files. Those files contain sensitive information including hashed domain and/or local credentials.
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Potential File Transfer via Certreq
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Command and Control Tactic: Exfiltration Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies Certreq making an HTTP Post request. Adversaries could abuse Certreq to download files or upload data to a remote URL.
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Potential Veeam Credential Access Command
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Credential Access Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies commands that can access and decrypt Veeam credentials stored in MSSQL databases. Attackers can use Veeam Credentials to target backups as part of destructive operations such as Ransomware attacks.
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Identifies a potential Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) abuse to execute psexec to enable for lateral movement. WSUS is limited to executing Microsoft signed binaries, which limits the executables that can be used to tools published by Microsoft.
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Remote File Download via Desktopimgdownldr Utility
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Command and Control Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the desktopimgdownldr utility being used to download a remote file. An adversary may use desktopimgdownldr to download arbitrary files as an alternative to certutil.
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Remote File Download via MpCmdRun
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Command and Control Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the Windows Defender configuration utility (MpCmdRun.exe) being used to download a remote file.
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Windows Credential Manager allows you to create, view, or delete saved credentials for signing into websites, connected applications, and networks. An adversary may abuse this to list or dump credentials stored in the Credential Manager for saved usernames and passwords. This may also be performed in preparation of lateral movement.
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Symbolic Link to Shadow Copy Created
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Credential Access Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the creation of symbolic links to a shadow copy. Symbolic links can be used to access files in the shadow copy, including sensitive files such as ntds.dit, System Boot Key and browser offline credentials.
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Bypass UAC via Event Viewer
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies User Account Control (UAC) bypass via eventvwr.exe. Attackers bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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Identifies use of WinRar or 7z to create an encrypted files. Adversaries will often compress and encrypt data in preparation for exfiltration.
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Persistence via TelemetryController Scheduled Task Hijack
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Tactic: Privilege Escalation Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Detects the successful hijack of Microsoft Compatibility Appraiser scheduled task to establish persistence with an integrity level of system.
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The Application Shim was created to allow for backward compatibility of software as the operating system codebase changes over time. This Windows functionality has been abused by attackers to stealthily gain persistence and arbitrary code execution in legitimate Windows processes.
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System Shells via Services
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Windows services typically run as SYSTEM and can be used as a privilege escalation opportunity. Malware or penetration testers may run a shell as a service to gain SYSTEM permissions.
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UAC Bypass Attempt via Windows Directory Masquerading
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies an attempt to bypass User Account Control (UAC) by masquerading as a Microsoft trusted Windows directory. Attackers may bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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UAC Bypass via DiskCleanup Scheduled Task Hijack
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies User Account Control (UAC) bypass via hijacking DiskCleanup Scheduled Task. Attackers bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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Unusual Parent-Child Relationship
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies Windows programs run from unexpected parent processes. This could indicate masquerading or other strange activity on a system.
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User Account Creation
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempts to create new users. This is sometimes done by attackers to increase access or establish persistence on a system or domain.
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Web Shell Detection: Script Process Child of Common Web Processes
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious commands executed via a web server, which may suggest a vulnerability and remote shell access.
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Identifies execution from the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) shared mountpoint tsclient on the target host. This may indicate a lateral movement attempt.
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Microsoft Exchange Server UM Spawning Suspicious Processes
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Lateral Movement Data Source: Elastic Endgame Use Case: Vulnerability Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious processes being spawned by the Microsoft Exchange Server Unified Messaging (UM) service. This activity has been observed exploiting CVE-2021-26857.
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New ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceID Added via PowerShell
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the use of the Exchange PowerShell cmdlet, Set-CASMailbox, to add a new ActiveSync allowed device. Adversaries may target user email to collect sensitive information.
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Identifies a remote file copy attempt to a hidden network share. This may indicate lateral movement or data staging activity.
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Suspicious Execution from INET Cache
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Command and Control Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the execution of a process with arguments pointing to the INetCache Folder. Adversaries may deliver malicious content via WININET during initial access.
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Suspicious MS Office Child Process
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious child processes of frequently targeted Microsoft Office applications (Word, PowerPoint, Excel). These child processes are often launched during exploitation of Office applications or from documents with malicious macros.
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Suspicious MS Outlook Child Process
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious child processes of Microsoft Outlook. These child processes are often associated with spear phishing activity.
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Identifies the execution of PowerShell with suspicious argument values. This behavior is often observed during malware installation leveraging PowerShell.
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Unusual Child Process of dns.exe
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Lateral Movement Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Use Case: Vulnerability Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies an unexpected process spawning from dns.exe, the process responsible for Windows DNS server services, which may indicate activity related to remote code execution or other forms of exploitation.
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Volume Shadow Copy Deletion via PowerShell
Nov 5, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Impact Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the use of the Win32_ShadowCopy class and related cmdlets to achieve shadow copy deletion. This commonly occurs in tandem with ransomware or other destructive attacks.
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Command Execution via SolarWinds Process
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Execution Tactic: Initial Access Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike · -
Identifies native Windows host and network enumeration commands spawned by the Windows Management Instrumentation Provider Service (WMIPrvSE).
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Detects attempts to execute a program on the host from the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Adversaries may enable and use WSL for Linux to avoid detection.
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Identifies attempts to open a Microsoft Management Console File from untrusted paths. Adversaries may use MSC files for initial access and execution.
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Managed Object Format (MOF) files can be compiled locally or remotely through mofcomp.exe. Attackers may leverage MOF files to build their own namespaces and classes into the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) repository, or establish persistence using WMI Event Subscription.
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Potential Foxmail Exploitation
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Initial Access Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: System Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the Foxmail client spawning a child process with argument pointing to the Foxmail temp directory. This may indicate the successful exploitation of a Foxmail vulnerability for initial access and execution via a malicious email.
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Process Activity via Compiled HTML File
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Compiled HTML files (.chm) are commonly distributed as part of the Microsoft HTML Help system. Adversaries may conceal malicious code in a CHM file and deliver it to a victim for execution. CHM content is loaded by the HTML Help executable program (hh.exe).
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Identifies execution from a directory masquerading as the Windows Program Files directories. These paths are trusted and usually host trusted third party programs. An adversary may leverage masquerading, along with low privileges to bypass detections allowlisting those folders.
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Identifies suspicious command execution (cmd) via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) on a remote host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement.
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Suspicious PDF Reader Child Process
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Execution Tactic: Initial Access Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious child processes of PDF reader applications. These child processes are often launched via exploitation of PDF applications or social engineering.
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Detects attempts to install or use Kali Linux via Windows Subsystem for Linux. Adversaries may enable and use WSL for Linux to avoid detection.
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Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies unusual instances of Control Panel with suspicious keywords or paths in the process command line value. Adversaries may abuse control.exe to proxy execution of malicious code.
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Enable Host Network Discovery via Netsh
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the netsh.exe program to enable host discovery via the network. Attackers can use this command-line tool to weaken the host firewall settings.
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Identifies the use of nltest.exe for domain trust discovery purposes. Adversaries may use this command-line utility to enumerate domain trusts and gain insight into trust relationships, as well as the state of Domain Controller (DC) replication in a Microsoft Windows NT Domain.
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Microsoft Build Engine Started by a System Process
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, was started by Explorer or the WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) subsystem. This behavior is unusual and is sometimes used by malicious payloads.
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Microsoft Build Engine Started by an Office Application
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, was started by Excel or Word. This is unusual behavior for the Build Engine and could have been caused by an Excel or Word document executing a malicious script payload.
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Signed Proxy Execution via MS Work Folders
Identifies the use of Windows Work Folders to execute a potentially masqueraded control.exe file in the current working directory. Misuse of Windows Work Folders could indicate malicious activity.
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Identifies a suspicious managed code hosting process which could indicate code injection or other form of suspicious code execution.
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Suspicious Zoom Child Process
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Crowdstrike ·A suspicious Zoom child process was detected, which may indicate an attempt to run unnoticed. Verify process details such as command line, network connections, file writes and associated file signature details as well.
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Identifies processes running from an Alternate Data Stream. This is uncommon for legitimate processes and sometimes done by adversaries to hide malware.
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Attempt to Establish VScode Remote Tunnel
Detects the execution of the VScode portable binary with the tunnel command line option indicating an attempt to establish a remote tunnel session to Github or a remote VScode instance.
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Identifies the creation or modification of Domain Backup private keys. Adversaries may extract the Data Protection API (DPAPI) domain backup key from a Domain Controller (DC) to be able to decrypt any domain user master key file.
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Disable Windows Firewall Rules via Netsh
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies use of the netsh.exe to disable or weaken the local firewall. Attackers will use this command line tool to disable the firewall during troubleshooting or to enable network mobility.
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Exporting Exchange Mailbox via PowerShell
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Collection Tactic: Execution Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the use of the Exchange PowerShell cmdlet, New-MailBoxExportRequest, to export the contents of a primary mailbox or archive to a .pst file. Adversaries may target user email to collect sensitive information.
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Identifies the creation of .kirbi files. The creation of this kind of file is an indicator of an attacker running Kerberos ticket dump utilities, such as Mimikatz, and precedes attacks such as Pass-The-Ticket (PTT), which allows the attacker to impersonate users using Kerberos tickets.
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Potential File Download via a Headless Browser
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Command and Control Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Windows Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies the use of a browser to download a file from a remote URL and from a suspicious parent process. Adversaries may use browsers to avoid ingress tool transfer restrictions.
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Potential Local NTLM Relay via HTTP
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Credential Access Tactic: Defense Evasion Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies attempt to coerce a local NTLM authentication via HTTP using the Windows Printer Spooler service as a target. An adversary may use this primitive in combination with other techniques to elevate privileges on a compromised system.
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Potential Remote Desktop Tunneling Detected
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Command and Control Tactic: Lateral Movement Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies potential use of an SSH utility to establish RDP over a reverse SSH Tunnel. This can be used by attackers to enable routing of network packets that would otherwise not reach their intended destination.
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Suspicious .NET Code Compilation
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Execution Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies executions of .NET compilers with suspicious parent processes, which can indicate an attacker's attempt to compile code after delivery in order to bypass security mechanisms.
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Suspicious ScreenConnect Client Child Process
Nov 4, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Command and Control Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: System Data Source: Crowdstrike ·Identifies suspicious processes being spawned by the ScreenConnect client processes. This activity may indicate execution abusing unauthorized access to the ScreenConnect remote access software.
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Anomalous Process For a Windows Population
Searches for rare processes running on multiple hosts in an entire fleet or network. This reduces the detection of false positives since automated maintenance processes usually only run occasionally on a single machine but are common to all or many hosts in a fleet.
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The hosts file on endpoints is used to control manual IP address to hostname resolutions. The hosts file is the first point of lookup for DNS hostname resolution so if adversaries can modify the endpoint hosts file, they can route traffic to malicious infrastructure. This rule detects modifications to the hosts file on Microsoft Windows, Linux (Ubuntu or RHEL) and macOS systems.
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A supervised machine learning model (ProblemChild) has identified a suspicious Windows process event with high probability of it being malicious activity. Alternatively, the model's blocklist identified the event as being malicious.
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Suspicious Powershell Script
A machine learning job detected a PowerShell script with unusual data characteristics, such as obfuscation, that may be a characteristic of malicious PowerShell script text blocks.
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A machine learning job combination has detected a set of one or more suspicious Windows processes with unusually high scores for malicious probability. These process(es) have been classified as malicious in several ways. The process(es) were predicted to be malicious by the ProblemChild supervised ML model. If the anomaly contains a cluster of suspicious processes, each process has the same parent process name, and the aggregate score of the event cluster was calculated to be unusually high by an unsupervised ML model. Such a cluster often contains suspicious or malicious activity, possibly involving LOLbins, that may be resistant to detection using conventional search rules.
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A machine learning job combination has detected a set of one or more suspicious Windows processes with unusually high scores for malicious probability. These process(es) have been classified as malicious in several ways. The process(es) were predicted to be malicious by the ProblemChild supervised ML model. If the anomaly contains a cluster of suspicious processes, each process has the same user name, and the aggregate score of the event cluster was calculated to be unusually high by an unsupervised ML model. Such a cluster often contains suspicious or malicious activity, possibly involving LOLbins, that may be resistant to detection using conventional search rules.
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Identifies rare processes that do not usually run on individual hosts, which can indicate execution of unauthorized services, malware, or persistence mechanisms. Processes are considered rare when they only run occasionally as compared with other processes running on the host.
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A machine learning job has detected a suspicious Windows process. This process has been classified as suspicious in two ways. It was predicted to be suspicious by the ProblemChild supervised ML model, and it was found to be an unusual process, on a host that does not commonly manifest malicious activity. Such a process may be an instance of suspicious or malicious activity, possibly involving LOLbins, that may be resistant to detection using conventional search rules.
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A machine learning job has detected a suspicious Windows process. This process has been classified as malicious in two ways. It was predicted to be malicious by the ProblemChild supervised ML model, and it was found to be an unusual child process name, for the parent process, by an unsupervised ML model. Such a process may be an instance of suspicious or malicious activity, possibly involving LOLbins, that may be resistant to detection using conventional search rules.
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A machine learning job has detected a suspicious Windows process. This process has been classified as malicious in two ways. It was predicted to be malicious by the ProblemChild supervised ML model, and it was found to be suspicious given that its user context is unusual and does not commonly manifest malicious activity,by an unsupervised ML model. Such a process may be an instance of suspicious or malicious activity, possibly involving LOLbins, that may be resistant to detection using conventional search rules.
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Unusual Windows Network Activity
Identifies Windows processes that do not usually use the network but have unexpected network activity, which can indicate command-and-control, lateral movement, persistence, or data exfiltration activity. A process with unusual network activity can denote process exploitation or injection, where the process is used to run persistence mechanisms that allow a malicious actor remote access or control of the host, data exfiltration, and execution of unauthorized network applications.
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Unusual Windows Path Activity
Identifies processes started from atypical folders in the file system, which might indicate malware execution or persistence mechanisms. In corporate Windows environments, software installation is centrally managed and it is unusual for programs to be executed from user or temporary directories. Processes executed from these locations can denote that a user downloaded software directly from the Internet or a malicious script or macro executed malware.
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Unusual Windows Process Calling the Metadata Service
Looks for anomalous access to the metadata service by an unusual process. The metadata service may be targeted in order to harvest credentials or user data scripts containing secrets.
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Unusual Windows Remote User
A machine learning job detected an unusual remote desktop protocol (RDP) username, which can indicate account takeover or credentialed persistence using compromised accounts. RDP attacks, such as BlueKeep, also tend to use unusual usernames.
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Unusual Windows Service
A machine learning job detected an unusual Windows service, This can indicate execution of unauthorized services, malware, or persistence mechanisms. In corporate Windows environments, hosts do not generally run many rare or unique services. This job helps detect malware and persistence mechanisms that have been installed and run as a service.
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Unusual Windows User Calling the Metadata Service
Looks for anomalous access to the cloud platform metadata service by an unusual user. The metadata service may be targeted in order to harvest credentials or user data scripts containing secrets.
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Unusual Windows User Privilege Elevation Activity
A machine learning job detected an unusual user context switch, using the runas command or similar techniques, which can indicate account takeover or privilege escalation using compromised accounts. Privilege elevation using tools like runas are more commonly used by domain and network administrators than by regular Windows users.
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Unusual Windows Username
A machine learning job detected activity for a username that is not normally active, which can indicate unauthorized changes, activity by unauthorized users, lateral movement, or compromised credentials. In many organizations, new usernames are not often created apart from specific types of system activities, such as creating new accounts for new employees. These user accounts quickly become active and routine. Events from rarely used usernames can point to suspicious activity. Additionally, automated Linux fleets tend to see activity from rarely used usernames only when personnel log in to make authorized or unauthorized changes, or threat actors have acquired credentials and log in for malicious purposes. Unusual usernames can also indicate pivoting, where compromised credentials are used to try and move laterally from one host to another.
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Identifies the deletion of WebServer access logs. This may indicate an attempt to evade detection or destroy forensic evidence on a system.
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Detects the creation and modification of an account with the "Don't Expire Password" option Enabled. Attackers can abuse this misconfiguration to persist in the domain and maintain long-term access using compromised accounts with this property.
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Detects modifications in the AdminSDHolder object. Attackers can abuse the SDProp process to implement a persistent backdoor in Active Directory. SDProp compares the permissions on protected objects with those defined on the AdminSDHolder object. If the permissions on any of the protected accounts and groups do not match, the permissions on the protected accounts and groups are reset to match those of the domain's AdminSDHolder object, regaining their Administrative Privileges.
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Identifies unusual parent-child process relationships that can indicate malware execution or persistence mechanisms. Malicious scripts often call on other applications and processes as part of their exploit payload. For example, when a malicious Office document runs scripts as part of an exploit payload, Excel or Word may start a script interpreter process, which, in turn, runs a script that downloads and executes malware. Another common scenario is Outlook running an unusual process when malware is downloaded in an email. Monitoring and identifying anomalous process relationships is a method of detecting new and emerging malware that is not yet recognized by anti-virus scanners.
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Enumeration of Privileged Local Groups Membership
Identifies instances of an unusual process enumerating built-in Windows privileged local groups membership like Administrators or Remote Desktop users.
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Identifies the use of the Exchange PowerShell cmdlet, New-MailBoxExportRequest, to export the contents of a primary mailbox or archive to a .pst file. Adversaries may target user email to collect sensitive information.
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Adversaries may install legitimate remote access tools (RAT) to compromised endpoints for further command-and-control (C2). Adversaries can rely on installed RATs for persistence, execution of native commands and more. This rule detects when a process is started whose name or code signature resembles commonly abused RATs. This is a New Terms rule type indicating the host has not seen this RAT process started before within the last 30 days.
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First Time Seen NewCredentials Logon Process
Identifies a new credentials logon type performed by an unusual process. This may indicate the existence of an access token forging capability that are often abused to bypass access control restrictions.
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Identifies newly seen removable devices by device friendly name using registry modification events. While this activity is not inherently malicious, analysts can use those events to aid monitoring for data exfiltration over those devices.
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This rule identifies when a User Account starts the Active Directory Replication Process for the first time. Attackers can use the DCSync technique to get credential information of individual accounts or the entire domain, thus compromising the entire domain.
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This rule identifies a high number (10) of process terminations (stop, delete, or suspend) from the same host within a short time period.
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Identifies the modification of an account's Kerberos pre-authentication options. An adversary with GenericWrite/GenericAll rights over the account can maliciously modify these settings to perform offline password cracking attacks such as AS-REP roasting.
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An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, started a PowerShell script or the Visual C# Command Line Compiler. This technique is sometimes used to deploy a malicious payload using the Build Engine.
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Microsoft Build Engine Started by a Script Process
An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, was started by a script or the Windows command interpreter. This behavior is unusual and is sometimes used by malicious payloads.
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Identify the modification of the msPKIAccountCredentials attribute in an Active Directory User Object. Attackers can abuse the credentials roaming feature to overwrite an arbitrary file for privilege escalation. ms-PKI-AccountCredentials contains binary large objects (BLOBs) of encrypted credential objects from the credential manager store, private keys, certificates, and certificate requests.
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Identifies the modification of the nTSecurityDescriptor attribute in a domain object with rights related to DCSync to a user/computer account. Attackers can use this backdoor to re-obtain access to hashes of any user/computer.
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Identifies the execution of PowerShell script with keywords related to different Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) bypasses. An adversary may attempt first to disable AMSI before executing further malicious powershell scripts to evade detection.
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Potential Cookies Theft via Browser Debugging
Identifies the execution of a Chromium based browser with the debugging process argument, which may indicate an attempt to steal authentication cookies. An adversary may steal web application or service session cookies and use them to gain access web applications or Internet services as an authenticated user without needing credentials.
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Mimikatz is a credential dumper capable of obtaining plaintext Windows account logins and passwords, along with many other features that make it useful for testing the security of networks. This rule detects Invoke-Mimikatz PowerShell script and alike.
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Potential LSASS Memory Dump via PssCaptureSnapShot
Identifies suspicious access to an LSASS handle via PssCaptureSnapShot where two successive process accesses are performed by the same process and target two different instances of LSASS. This may indicate an attempt to evade detection and dump LSASS memory for credential access.
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Potential Pass-the-Hash (PtH) Attempt
Adversaries may pass the hash using stolen password hashes to move laterally within an environment, bypassing normal system access controls. Pass the hash (PtH) is a method of authenticating as a user without having access to the user's cleartext password.
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Potential PowerShell HackTool Script by Author
Detects known PowerShell offensive tooling author's name in PowerShell scripts. Attackers commonly use out-of-the-box offensive tools without modifying the code, which may still contain the author artifacts. This rule identifies common author handles found in popular PowerShell scripts used for red team exercises.
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Potential PowerShell HackTool Script by Function Names
Detects known PowerShell offensive tooling functions names in PowerShell scripts. Attackers commonly use out-of-the-box offensive tools without modifying the code. This rule aim is to take advantage of that.
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Potential PowerShell Obfuscated Script
Identifies scripts that contain patterns and known methods that obfuscate PowerShell code. Attackers can use obfuscation techniques to bypass PowerShell security protections such as Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI).
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Detects PowerShell scripts that can execute pass-the-hash (PtH) attacks, intercept and relay NTLM challenges, and carry out other man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.
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Detects the use of Windows API functions that are commonly abused by malware and security tools to load malicious code or inject it into remote processes.
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This rule identifies a high number (20) of file creation event by the System virtual process from the same host and with same file name containing keywords similar to ransomware note files and all within a short time period.
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Identify the modification of the msDS-KeyCredentialLink attribute in an Active Directory Computer or User Object. Attackers can abuse control over the object and create a key pair, append to raw public key in the attribute, and obtain persistent and stealthy access to the target user or computer object.
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Detects PowerShell scripts that contain the default exported functions used on Invoke-NinjaCopy. Attackers can use Invoke-NinjaCopy to read SYSTEM files that are normally locked, such as the NTDS.dit file or registry hives.
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PowerShell Kerberos Ticket Dump
Detects PowerShell scripts that have the capability of dumping Kerberos tickets from LSA, which potentially indicates an attacker's attempt to acquire credentials for lateral movement.
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Detects PowerShell scripts that have the capability of requesting kerberos tickets, which is a common step in Kerberoasting toolkits to crack service accounts.
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Detects the use of Win32 API Functions that can be used to capture user keystrokes in PowerShell scripts. Attackers use this technique to capture user input, looking for credentials and/or other valuable data.
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Detects PowerShell scripts that can be used to collect data from mailboxes. Adversaries may target user email to collect sensitive information.
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This rule detects PowerShell scripts capable of dumping process memory using WindowsErrorReporting or Dbghelp.dll MiniDumpWriteDump. Attackers can use this tooling to dump LSASS and get access to credentials.
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PowerShell PSReflect Script
Detects the use of PSReflect in PowerShell scripts. Attackers leverage PSReflect as a library that enables PowerShell to access win32 API functions.
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Identifies the use of Cmdlets and methods related to encryption/decryption of files in PowerShell scripts, which malware and offensive security tools can abuse to encrypt data or decrypt payloads to bypass security solutions.
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PowerShell Script with Token Impersonation Capabilities
Detects scripts that contain PowerShell functions, structures, or Windows API functions related to token impersonation/theft. Attackers may duplicate then impersonate another user's token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
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PowerShell Script with Veeam Credential Access Capabilities
Identifies PowerShell scripts that can access and decrypt Veeam credentials stored in MSSQL databases. Attackers can use Veeam Credentials to target backups as part of destructive operations such as Ransomware attacks.
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PowerShell Script with Webcam Video Capture Capabilities
Detects PowerShell scripts that can be used to record webcam video. Attackers can capture this information to extort or spy on victims.
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Detects scripts that contain PowerShell functions, structures, or Windows API functions related to windows share enumeration activities. Attackers, mainly ransomware groups, commonly identify and inspect network shares, looking for critical information for encryption and/or exfiltration.
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This rule detects the use of discovery-related Windows API functions in PowerShell Scripts. Attackers can use these functions to perform various situational awareness related activities, like enumerating users, shares, sessions, domain trusts, groups, etc.
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Identifies the use of .NET functionality for decompression and base64 decoding combined in PowerShell scripts, which malware and security tools heavily use to deobfuscate payloads and load them directly in memory to bypass defenses.
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Detects PowerShell scripts that can record audio, a common feature in popular post-exploitation tooling.
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Detects PowerShell scripts that can get the contents of the clipboard, which attackers can abuse to retrieve sensitive information like credentials, messages, etc.
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Detects PowerShell scripts that can take screenshots, which is a common feature in post-exploitation kits and remote access tools (RATs).
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This rule detects rare internet network connections via the SMB protocol. SMB is commonly used to leak NTLM credentials via rogue UNC path injection.
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Identifies the assignment of the SeEnableDelegationPrivilege sensitive "user right" to a user. The SeEnableDelegationPrivilege "user right" enables computer and user accounts to be trusted for delegation. Attackers can abuse this right to compromise Active Directory accounts and elevate their privileges.
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Detects the use of Reflection.Assembly to load PEs and DLLs in memory in PowerShell scripts. Attackers use this method to load executables and DLLs without writing to the disk, bypassing security solutions.
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Detects the presence of a portable executable (PE) in a PowerShell script by looking for its encoded header. Attackers embed PEs into PowerShell scripts to inject them into memory, avoiding defences by not writing to disk.
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Detects attempts to exploit privilege escalation vulnerabilities related to the Print Spooler service. For more information refer to the following CVE's - CVE-2020-1048, CVE-2020-1337 and CVE-2020-1300 and verify that the impacted system is patched.
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Identifies a suspicious parent child process relationship with cmd.exe descending from svchost.exe
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Detects when a user account has the servicePrincipalName attribute modified. Attackers can abuse write privileges over a user to configure Service Principle Names (SPNs) so that they can perform Kerberoasting. Administrators can also configure this for legitimate purposes, exposing the account to Kerberoasting.
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Windows CryptoAPI Spoofing Vulnerability (CVE-2020-0601 - CurveBall)
A spoofing vulnerability exists in the way Windows CryptoAPI (Crypt32.dll) validates Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) certificates. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by using a spoofed code-signing certificate to sign a malicious executable, making it appear the file was from a trusted, legitimate source.
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Windows Event Logs Cleared
Identifies attempts to clear Windows event log stores. This is often done by attackers in an attempt to evade detection or destroy forensic evidence on a system.
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Windows User Account Creation
Identifies attempts to create a Windows User Account. This is sometimes done by attackers to persist or increase access to a system or domain.
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Identifies the modification of the network logon provider registry. Adversaries may register a rogue network logon provider module for persistence and/or credential access via intercepting the authentication credentials in clear text during user logon.
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Persistence via Update Orchestrator Service Hijack
Oct 21, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Persistence Tactic: Privilege Escalation Use Case: Vulnerability Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne ·Identifies potential hijacking of the Microsoft Update Orchestrator Service to establish persistence with an integrity level of SYSTEM.
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Potential Credential Access via Windows Utilities
Oct 21, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Credential Access Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Sysmon ·Identifies the execution of known Windows utilities often abused to dump LSASS memory or the Active Directory database (NTDS.dit) in preparation for credential access.
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Identifies when a browser process navigates to the Microsoft Help page followed by spawning an elevated process. This may indicate a successful exploitation for privilege escalation abusing a vulnerable Windows Installer repair setup.
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The Filter Manager Control Program (fltMC.exe) binary may be abused by adversaries to unload a filter driver and evade defenses.
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Potential LSASS Clone Creation via PssCaptureSnapShot
Identifies the creation of an LSASS process clone via PssCaptureSnapShot where the parent process is the initial LSASS process instance. This may indicate an attempt to evade detection and dump LSASS memory for credential access.
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Identifies process execution from suspicious default Windows directories. This is sometimes done by adversaries to hide malware in trusted paths.
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Identifies modifications to the registered Subject Interface Package (SIP) providers. SIP providers are used by the Windows cryptographic system to validate file signatures on the system. This may be an attempt to bypass signature validation checks or inject code into critical processes.
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Detects attempts to exploit a privilege escalation vulnerability (CVE-2020-1030) related to the print spooler service. Exploitation involves chaining multiple primitives to load an arbitrary DLL into the print spooler process running as SYSTEM.
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Uncommon Registry Persistence Change
Detects changes to registry persistence keys that are not commonly used or modified by legitimate programs. This could be an indication of an adversary's attempt to persist in a stealthy manner.
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Unsigned DLL loaded by DNS Service
Identifies unusual DLLs loaded by the DNS Server process, potentially indicating the abuse of the ServerLevelPluginDll functionality. This can lead to privilege escalation and remote code execution with SYSTEM privileges.
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Identifies a suspicious child process of the Windows virtual system process, which could indicate code injection.
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Identifies modifications to the Windows Defender registry settings to disable the service or set the service to be started manually.
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Elastic Agent Service Terminated
Identifies the Elastic endpoint agent has stopped and is no longer running on the host. Adversaries may attempt to disable security monitoring tools in an attempt to evade detection or prevention capabilities during an intrusion. This may also indicate an issue with the agent itself and should be addressed to ensure defensive measures are back in a stable state.
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A scheduled task was created
Indicates the creation of a scheduled task using Windows event logs. Adversaries can use these to establish persistence, move laterally, and/or escalate privileges.
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A scheduled task was updated
Indicates the update of a scheduled task using Windows event logs. Adversaries can use these to establish persistence, by changing the configuration of a legit scheduled task. Some changes such as disabling or enabling a scheduled task are common and may may generate noise.
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Identify access to sensitive Active Directory object attributes that contains credentials and decryption keys such as unixUserPassword, ms-PKI-AccountCredentials and msPKI-CredentialRoamingTokens.
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Identifies when the SYSTEM account uses an account discovery utility. This could be a sign of discovery activity after an adversary has achieved privilege escalation.
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Account Password Reset Remotely
Identifies an attempt to reset a potentially privileged account password remotely. Adversaries may manipulate account passwords to maintain access or evade password duration policies and preserve compromised credentials.
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Identifies a user being added to an active directory group by the SYSTEM (S-1-5-18) user. This behavior can indicate that the attacker has achieved SYSTEM privileges in a domain controller, which attackers can obtain by exploiting vulnerabilities or abusing default group privileges (e.g., Server Operators), and is attempting to pivot to a domain account.
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Identifies a modification on the dsHeuristics attribute on the bit that holds the configuration of groups excluded from the SDProp process. The SDProp compares the permissions on protected objects with those defined on the AdminSDHolder object. If the permissions on any of the protected accounts and groups do not match, the permissions on the protected accounts and groups are reset to match those of the domain's AdminSDHolder object, meaning that groups excluded will remain unchanged. Attackers can abuse this misconfiguration to maintain long-term access to privileged accounts in these groups.
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Identifies the creation of an Alternate Data Stream (ADS) at a volume root directory, which can indicate the attempt to hide tools and malware, as ADSs created in this directory are not displayed by system utilities.
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Identifies the install of browser extensions. Malicious browser extensions can be installed via app store downloads masquerading as legitimate extensions, social engineering, or by an adversary that has already compromised a system.
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Identifies attempts to disable the code signing policy through the registry. Code signing provides authenticity on a program, and grants the user with the ability to check whether the program has been tampered with. By allowing the execution of unsigned or self-signed code, threat actors can craft and execute malicious code.
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Identifies cmd.exe making a network connection. Adversaries could abuse cmd.exe to download or execute malware from a remote URL.
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Identifies command shell activity started via RunDLL32, which is commonly abused by attackers to host malicious code.
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Conhost Spawned By Suspicious Parent Process
Oct 15, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Execution Tactic: Defense Evasion Tactic: Privilege Escalation Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne ·Detects when the Console Window Host (conhost.exe) process is spawned by a suspicious parent process, which could be indicative of code injection.
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Connection to Commonly Abused Free SSL Certificate Providers
Identifies unusual processes connecting to domains using known free SSL certificates. Adversaries may employ a known encryption algorithm to conceal command and control traffic.
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Active Directory Integrated DNS (ADIDNS) is one of the core components of AD DS, leveraging AD's access control and replication to maintain domain consistency. It stores DNS zones as AD objects, a feature that, while robust, introduces some security issues because of the default permission (Any authenticated users) to create DNS-named records. Attackers can perform Dynamic Spoofing attacks, where they monitor LLMNR/NBT-NS requests and create DNS-named records to target systems that are requested from multiple systems. They can also create specific records to target specific services, such as wpad, for spoofing attacks.
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Identifies the creation of a hidden local user account by appending the dollar sign to the account name. This is sometimes done by attackers to increase access to a system and avoid appearing in the results of accounts listing using the net users command.
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Detects the creation or modification of a new Group Policy based scheduled task or service. These methods are used for legitimate system administration, but can also be abused by an attacker with domain admin permissions to execute a malicious payload remotely on all or a subset of the domain joined machines.
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Identifies the creation or modification of a local trusted root certificate in Windows. The install of a malicious root certificate would allow an attacker the ability to masquerade malicious files as valid signed components from any entity (for example, Microsoft). It could also allow an attacker to decrypt SSL traffic.
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User Account Control (UAC) can help mitigate the impact of malware on Windows hosts. With UAC, apps and tasks always run in the security context of a non-administrator account, unless an administrator specifically authorizes administrator-level access to the system. This rule identifies registry value changes to bypass User Access Control (UAC) protection.
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Identifies changes to the DNS Global Query Block List (GQBL), a security feature that prevents the resolution of certain DNS names often exploited in attacks like WPAD spoofing. Attackers with certain privileges, such as DNSAdmins, can modify or disable the GQBL, allowing exploitation of hosts running WPAD with default settings for privilege escalation and lateral movement.
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Identifies when a user enables DNS-over-HTTPS. This can be used to hide internet activity or the process of exfiltrating data. With this enabled, an organization will lose visibility into data such as query type, response, and originating IP, which are used to determine bad actors.
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Identifies registry write modifications to hide an encoded portable executable. This could be indicative of adversary defense evasion by avoiding the storing of malicious content directly on disk.
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Masquerading can allow an adversary to evade defenses and better blend in with the environment. One way it occurs is when the name or location of a file is manipulated as a means of tricking a user into executing what they think is a benign file type but is actually executable code.
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Execution from Unusual Directory - Command Line
Oct 15, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Execution Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: System Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne ·Identifies process execution from suspicious default Windows directories. This may be abused by adversaries to hide malware in trusted paths.
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Identifies a suspicious file that was written by a PDF reader application and subsequently executed. These processes are often launched via exploitation of PDF applications.
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Identifies execution of suspicious persistent programs (scripts, rundll32, etc.) by looking at process lineage and command line usage.
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Identifies the creation, change, or deletion of a DLL module within a Windows SxS local folder. Adversaries may abuse shared modules to execute malicious payloads by instructing the Windows module loader to load DLLs from arbitrary local paths.
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File Creation Time Changed
Identifies modification of a file creation time. Adversaries may modify file time attributes to blend malicious content with existing files. Timestomping is a technique that modifies the timestamps of a file often to mimic files that are in trusted directories.
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Identifies the enable of the full user-mode dumps feature system-wide. This feature allows Windows Error Reporting (WER) to collect data after an application crashes. This setting is a requirement for the LSASS Shtinkering attack, which fakes the communication of a crash on LSASS, generating a dump of the process memory, which gives the attacker access to the credentials present on the system without having to bring malware to the system. This setting is not enabled by default, and applications must create their registry subkeys to hold settings that enable them to collect dumps.
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Detects the first occurrence of a modification to Group Policy Object Attributes to add privileges to user accounts or use them to add users as local admins.
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Detects files creation and modification on the host system from the the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Adversaries may enable and use WSL for Linux to avoid detection.
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The Debugger and SilentProcessExit registry keys can allow an adversary to intercept the execution of files, causing a different process to be executed. This functionality can be abused by an adversary to establish persistence.
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Incoming DCOM Lateral Movement via MSHTA
Identifies the use of Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) to execute commands from a remote host, which are launched via the HTA Application COM Object. This behavior may indicate an attacker abusing a DCOM application to move laterally while attempting to evade detection.
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Identifies the use of Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) to run commands from a remote host, which are launched via the MMC20 Application COM Object. This behavior may indicate an attacker abusing a DCOM application to move laterally.
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Incoming DCOM Lateral Movement with ShellBrowserWindow or ShellWindows
Identifies use of Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) to run commands from a remote host, which are launched via the ShellBrowserWindow or ShellWindows Application COM Object. This behavior may indicate an attacker abusing a DCOM application to stealthily move laterally.
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Identifies remote execution via Windows PowerShell remoting. Windows PowerShell remoting allows a user to run any Windows PowerShell command on one or more remote computers. This could be an indication of lateral movement.
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Incoming Execution via WinRM Remote Shell
Identifies remote execution via Windows Remote Management (WinRM) remote shell on a target host. This could be an indication of lateral movement.
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Identifies the installation of custom Application Compatibility Shim databases. This Windows functionality has been abused by attackers to stealthily gain persistence and arbitrary code execution in legitimate Windows processes.
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Identifies registry modifications related to the Windows Security Support Provider (SSP) configuration. Adversaries may abuse this to establish persistence in an environment.
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InstallUtil Process Making Network Connections
Identifies InstallUtil.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity as InstallUtil is often leveraged by adversaries to execute code and evade detection.
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Interactive Logon by an Unusual Process
Identifies interactive logon attempt with alternate credentials and by an unusual process. Adversaries may create a new token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
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Identifies the modification of the msDS-AllowedToDelegateTo attribute to KRBTGT. Attackers can use this technique to maintain persistence to the domain by having the ability to request tickets for the KRBTGT service.
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Identifies suspicious file creations in the startup folder of a remote system. An adversary could abuse this to move laterally by dropping a malicious script or executable that will be executed after a reboot or user logon.
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Identifies registry modification to the LocalAccountTokenFilterPolicy policy. If this value exists (which doesn't by default) and is set to 1, then remote connections from all local members of Administrators are granted full high-integrity tokens during negotiation.
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Local Scheduled Task Creation
Indicates the creation of a scheduled task. Adversaries can use these to establish persistence, move laterally, and/or escalate privileges.
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Identifies the creation of a Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (lsass.exe) default memory dump. This may indicate a credential access attempt via trusted system utilities such as Task Manager (taskmgr.exe) and SQL Dumper (sqldumper.exe) or known pentesting tools such as Dumpert and AndrewSpecial.
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LSASS Memory Dump Handle Access
Identifies handle requests for the Local Security Authority Subsystem Service (LSASS) object access with specific access masks that many tools with a capability to dump memory to disk use (0x1fffff, 0x1010, 0x120089). This rule is tool agnostic as it has been validated against a host of various LSASS dump tools such as SharpDump, Procdump, Mimikatz, Comsvcs etc. It detects this behavior at a low level and does not depend on a specific tool or dump file name.
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An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, was started after being renamed. This is uncommon behavior and may indicate an attempt to run unnoticed or undetected.
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Microsoft Exchange Server UM Writing Suspicious Files
Identifies suspicious files being written by the Microsoft Exchange Server Unified Messaging (UM) service. This activity has been observed exploiting CVE-2021-26858.
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Identifies suspicious processes being spawned by the Microsoft Exchange Server worker process (w3wp). This activity may indicate exploitation activity or access to an existing web shell backdoor.
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Identifies when one or more features on Microsoft Defender are disabled. Adversaries may disable or tamper with Microsoft Defender features to evade detection and conceal malicious behavior.
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Identifies modifications of the AmsiEnable registry key to 0, which disables the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI). An adversary can modify this key to disable AMSI protections.
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Identifies attempts to modify the WDigest security provider in the registry to force the user's password to be stored in clear text in memory. This behavior can be indicative of an adversary attempting to weaken the security configuration of an endpoint. Once the UseLogonCredential value is modified, the adversary may attempt to dump clear text passwords from memory.
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Microsoft Office Products offer options for users and developers to control the security settings for running and using Macros. Adversaries may abuse these security settings to modify the default behavior of the Office Application to trust future macros and/or disable security warnings, which could increase their chances of establishing persistence.
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Identifies MsBuild.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity as MsBuild is often leveraged by adversaries to execute code and evade detection.
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Mshta Making Network Connections
Identifies Mshta.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity, as Mshta is often leveraged by adversaries to execute malicious scripts and evade detection.
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Identifies the execution of an MsiExec service child process followed by network or dns lookup activity. Adversaries may abuse Windows Installers for initial access and delivery of malware.
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Multiple Logon Failure Followed by Logon Success
Identifies multiple logon failures followed by a successful one from the same source address. Adversaries will often brute force login attempts across multiple users with a common or known password, in an attempt to gain access to accounts.
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Multiple Logon Failure from the same Source Address
Identifies multiple consecutive logon failures from the same source address and within a short time interval. Adversaries will often brute force login attempts across multiple users with a common or known password, in an attempt to gain access to accounts.
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Multiple Vault Web Credentials Read
Windows Credential Manager allows you to create, view, or delete saved credentials for signing into websites, connected applications, and networks. An adversary may abuse this to list or dump credentials stored in the Credential Manager for saved usernames and passwords. This may also be performed in preparation of lateral movement.
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Identifies the addition of a Netsh Helper DLL, netsh.exe supports the addition of these DLLs to extend its functionality. Attackers may abuse this mechanism to execute malicious payloads every time the utility is executed, which can be done by administrators or a scheduled task.
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Compiled HTML files (.chm) are commonly distributed as part of the Microsoft HTML Help system. Adversaries may conceal malicious code in a CHM file and deliver it to a victim for execution. CHM content is loaded by the HTML Help executable program (hh.exe).
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Network Connection via MsXsl
Identifies msxsl.exe making a network connection. This may indicate adversarial activity as msxsl.exe is often leveraged by adversaries to execute malicious scripts and evade detection.
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Identifies the native Windows tools regsvr32.exe, regsvr64.exe, RegSvcs.exe, or RegAsm.exe making a network connection. This may be indicative of an attacker bypassing allowlists or running arbitrary scripts via a signed Microsoft binary.
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Binaries signed with trusted digital certificates can execute on Windows systems protected by digital signature validation. Adversaries may use these binaries to 'live off the land' and execute malicious files that could bypass application allowlists and signature validation.
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Identifies the attempt to disable Network-Level Authentication (NLA) via registry modification. Network Level Authentication (NLA) is a feature on Windows that provides an extra layer of security for Remote Desktop (RDP) connections, as it requires users to authenticate before allowing a full RDP session. Attackers can disable NLA to enable persistence methods that require access to the Windows sign-in screen without authenticating, such as Accessibility Features persistence methods, like Sticky Keys.
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Identifies NullSessionPipe registry modifications that specify which pipes can be accessed anonymously. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement preparation by making the added pipe available to everyone.
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Outbound Scheduled Task Activity via PowerShell
Identifies the PowerShell process loading the Task Scheduler COM DLL followed by an outbound RPC network connection within a short time period. This may indicate lateral movement or remote discovery via scheduled tasks.
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Identifies modifications in registry keys associated with abuse of the Outlook Home Page functionality for command and control or persistence.
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An adversary can use the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) SetNotifyCmdLine method to execute a program that runs after a job finishes transferring data or after a job enters a specified state in order to persist on a system.
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Identifies a persistence mechanism that utilizes the NtSetValueKey native API to create a hidden (null terminated) registry key. An adversary may use this method to hide from system utilities such as the Registry Editor (regedit).
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Detects attempts to establish persistence on an endpoint by abusing Microsoft Office add-ins.
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Detects attempts to establish persistence on an endpoint by installing a rogue Microsoft Outlook VBA Template.
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Identifies the creation or modification of a PowerShell profile. PowerShell profile is a script that is executed when PowerShell starts to customize the user environment, which can be abused by attackers to persist in a environment where PowerShell is common.
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A job can be used to schedule programs or scripts to be executed at a specified date and time. Adversaries may abuse task scheduling functionality to facilitate initial or recurring execution of malicious code.
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Identifies script engines creating files in the Startup folder, or the creation of script files in the Startup folder. Adversaries may abuse this technique to maintain persistence in an environment.
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Port Forwarding Rule Addition
Oct 15, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Command and Control Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: SentinelOne Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint ·Identifies the creation of a new port forwarding rule. An adversary may abuse this technique to bypass network segmentation restrictions.
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Active Directory Integrated DNS (ADIDNS) is one of the core components of AD DS, leveraging AD's access control and replication to maintain domain consistency. It stores DNS zones as AD objects, a feature that, while robust, introduces some security issues, such as wildcard records, mainly because of the default permission (Any authenticated users) to create DNS-named records. Attackers can create wildcard records to redirect traffic that doesn't explicitly match records contained in the zone, becoming the Man-in-the-Middle and being able to abuse DNS similarly to LLMNR/NBNS spoofing.
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This rule identifies when a User Account starts the Active Directory Replication Process. Attackers can use the DCSync technique to get credential information of individual accounts or the entire domain, thus compromising the entire domain.
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Potential Credential Access via DuplicateHandle in LSASS
Identifies suspicious access to an LSASS handle via DuplicateHandle from an unknown call trace module. This may indicate an attempt to bypass the NtOpenProcess API to evade detection and dump LSASS memory for credential access.
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Potential Credential Access via LSASS Memory Dump
Identifies suspicious access to LSASS handle from a call trace pointing to DBGHelp.dll or DBGCore.dll, which both export the MiniDumpWriteDump method that can be used to dump LSASS memory content in preparation for credential access.
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Potential Credential Access via Renamed COM+ Services DLL
Identifies suspicious renamed COMSVCS.DLL Image Load, which exports the MiniDump function that can be used to dump a process memory. This may indicate an attempt to dump LSASS memory while bypassing command-line based detection in preparation for credential access.
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An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, loaded DLLs (dynamically linked libraries) responsible for Windows credential management. This technique is sometimes used for credential dumping.
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Identifies a Windows trusted program that is known to be vulnerable to DLL Search Order Hijacking starting after being renamed or from a non-standard path. This is uncommon behavior and may indicate an attempt to evade defenses via side-loading a malicious DLL within the memory space of one of those processes.
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Identifies an instance of a Windows trusted program that is known to be vulnerable to DLL Search Order Hijacking starting after being renamed or from a non-standard path. This is uncommon behavior and may indicate an attempt to evade defenses via side loading a malicious DLL within the memory space of one of those processes.
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Potential DNS Tunneling via NsLookup
This rule identifies a large number (15) of nslookup.exe executions with an explicit query type from the same host. This may indicate command and control activity utilizing the DNS protocol.
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Potential Evasion via Windows Filtering Platform
Identifies multiple Windows Filtering Platform block events and where the process name is related to an endpoint security software. Adversaries may add malicious WFP rules to prevent Endpoint security from sending telemetry.
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Adversaries may leverage unquoted service path vulnerabilities to escalate privileges. By placing an executable in a higher-level directory within the path of an unquoted service executable, Windows will natively launch this executable from its defined path variable instead of the benign one in a deeper directory, thus leading to code execution.
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Windows contains accessibility features that may be launched with a key combination before a user has logged in. An adversary can modify the way these programs are launched to get a command prompt or backdoor without logging in to the system.
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Identifies modification of the Time Provider. Adversaries may establish persistence by registering and enabling a malicious DLL as a time provider. Windows uses the time provider architecture to obtain accurate time stamps from other network devices or clients in the network. Time providers are implemented in the form of a DLL file which resides in the System32 folder. The service W32Time initiates during the startup of Windows and loads w32time.dll.
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Identifies a privilege escalation attempt via exploiting CVE-2022-38028 to hijack the print spooler service execution.
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Identifies registry modifications to default services that could enable privilege escalation to SYSTEM. Attackers with privileges from groups like Server Operators may change the ImagePath of services to executables under their control or to execute commands.
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Identifies a suspicious computer account name rename event, which may indicate an attempt to exploit CVE-2021-42278 to elevate privileges from a standard domain user to a user with domain admin privileges. CVE-2021-42278 is a security vulnerability that allows potential attackers to impersonate a domain controller via samAccountName attribute spoofing.
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Identifies potential relay attacks against a domain controller (DC) by identifying authentication events using the domain controller computer account coming from other hosts to the DC that owns the account. Attackers may relay the DC hash after capturing it using forced authentication.
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Identifies the modification of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Shadow registry or the execution of processes indicative of an active RDP shadowing session. An adversary may abuse the RDP Shadowing feature to spy on or control other users active RDP sessions.
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Detects file name patterns generated by the use of Sysinternals SDelete utility to securely delete a file via multiple file overwrite and rename operations.
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Identifies suspicious instances of the Windows Error Reporting process (WerFault.exe or Wermgr.exe) with matching command-line and process executable values performing outgoing network connections. This may be indicative of a masquerading attempt to evade suspicious child process behavior detections.
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Identifies the creation of a DNS record that is potentially meant to enable WPAD spoofing. Attackers can disable the Global Query Block List (GQBL) and create a "wpad" record to exploit hosts running WPAD with default settings for privilege escalation and lateral movement.
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Identifies attempts to disable PowerShell Script Block Logging via registry modification. Attackers may disable this logging to conceal their activities in the host and evade detection.
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Privilege Escalation via Rogue Named Pipe Impersonation
Identifies a privilege escalation attempt via rogue named pipe impersonation. An adversary may abuse this technique by masquerading as a known named pipe and manipulating a privileged process to connect to it.
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Identifies a privilege escalation attempt via a rogue Windows directory (Windir) environment variable. This is a known primitive that is often combined with other vulnerabilities to elevate privileges.
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Privileged Account Brute Force
Identifies multiple consecutive logon failures targeting an Admin account from the same source address and within a short time interval. Adversaries will often brute force login attempts across multiple users with a common or known password, in an attempt to gain access to accounts.
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Process Creation via Secondary Logon
Identifies process creation with alternate credentials. Adversaries may create a new process with a different token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
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Process Injection by the Microsoft Build Engine
An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, created a thread in another process. This technique is sometimes used to evade detection or elevate privileges.
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Identifies use of the SysInternals tool PsExec.exe making a network connection. This could be an indication of lateral movement.
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RDP Enabled via Registry
Identifies registry write modifications to enable Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) access. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement preparation.
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Detects attempts to maintain persistence by creating registry keys using AppCert DLLs. AppCert DLLs are loaded by every process using the common API functions to create processes.
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Registry Persistence via AppInit DLL
AppInit DLLs are dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) that are loaded into every process that creates a user interface (loads user32.dll) on Microsoft Windows operating systems. The AppInit DLL mechanism is used to load custom code into user-mode processes, allowing for the customization of the user interface and the behavior of Windows-based applications. Attackers who add those DLLs to the registry locations can execute code with elevated privileges, similar to process injection, and provide a solid and constant persistence on the machine.
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Identifies the remote update to a computer account's DnsHostName attribute. If the new value set is a valid domain controller DNS hostname and the subject computer name is not a domain controller, then it's highly likely a preparation step to exploit CVE-2022-26923 in an attempt to elevate privileges from a standard domain user to domain admin privileges.
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Identifies built-in Windows script interpreters (cscript.exe or wscript.exe) being used to download an executable file from a remote destination.
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Identifies remote scheduled task creations on a target host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement.
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Remote Scheduled Task Creation via RPC
Identifies scheduled task creation from a remote source. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement.
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Remote Windows Service Installed
Identifies a network logon followed by Windows service creation with same LogonId. This could be indicative of lateral movement, but will be noisy if commonly done by administrators."
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Identifies remote execution of Windows services over remote procedure call (RPC). This could be indicative of lateral movement, but will be noisy if commonly done by administrators.
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Identifies a suspicious AutoIt process execution. Malware written as an AutoIt script tends to rename the AutoIt executable to avoid detection.
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Identifies the execution of a process with a single character process name, differing from the original file name. This is often done by adversaries while staging, executing temporary utilities, or trying to bypass security detections based on the process name.
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A scheduled task was created by a Windows script via cscript.exe, wscript.exe or powershell.exe. This can be abused by an adversary to establish persistence.
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Detects the modification of Group Policy Object attributes to execute a scheduled task in the objects controlled by the GPO.
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Identifies attempts to enable the Windows scheduled tasks AT command via the registry. Attackers may use this method to move laterally or persist locally. The AT command has been deprecated since Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, but still exists for backwards compatibility.
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Identifies the execution of scripts via HTML applications using Windows utilities rundll32.exe or mshta.exe. Adversaries may bypass process and/or signature-based defenses by proxying execution of malicious content with signed binaries.
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SeDebugPrivilege Enabled by a Suspicious Process
Identifies the creation of a process running as SYSTEM and impersonating a Windows core binary privileges. Adversaries may create a new process with a different token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
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Service Command Lateral Movement
Identifies use of sc.exe to create, modify, or start services on remote hosts. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement but will be noisy if commonly done by admins.
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Identifies a suspicious local successful logon event where the Logon Package is Kerberos, the remote address is set to localhost, followed by a sevice creation from the same LogonId. This may indicate an attempt to leverage a Kerberos relay attack variant that can be used to elevate privilege locally from a domain joined user to local System privileges.
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Identifies a SolarWinds binary modifying the start type of a service to be disabled. An adversary may abuse this technique to manipulate relevant security services.
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Identifies files written to or modified in the startup folder by commonly abused processes. Adversaries may use this technique to maintain persistence.
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Detects the modification of Group Policy Objects (GPO) to add a startup/logon script to users or computer objects.
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Identify read access to a high number of Active Directory object attributes. The knowledge of objects properties can help adversaries find vulnerabilities, elevate privileges or collect sensitive information.
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Identifies the creation of the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI) DLL in an unusual location. This may indicate an attempt to bypass AMSI by loading a rogue AMSI module instead of the legit one.
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Identifies the loading of a non Microsoft signed DLL that is missing on a default Windows install (phantom DLL) or one that can be loaded from a different location by a native Windows process. This may be abused to persist or elevate privileges via privileged file write vulnerabilities.
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A suspicious Endpoint Security parent process was detected. This may indicate a process hollowing or other form of code injection.
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Identifies when a script interpreter or signed binary is launched via a non-standard working directory. An attacker may use this technique to evade defenses.
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Identifies execution of common Microsoft Office applications to launch an Office Add-In from a suspicious path or with an unusual parent process. This may indicate an attempt to get initial access via a malicious phishing MS Office Add-In.
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Suspicious Execution via Scheduled Task
Identifies execution of a suspicious program via scheduled tasks by looking at process lineage and command line usage.
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Detects Linux Bash commands from the the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Adversaries may enable and use WSL for Linux to avoid detection.
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Identifies a suspicious Windows explorer child process. Explorer.exe can be abused to launch malicious scripts or executables from a trusted parent process.
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Identifies a suspicious image load (taskschd.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity where a scheduled task is configured via Windows Component Object Model (COM). This technique can be used to configure persistence and evade monitoring by avoiding the usage of the traditional Windows binary (schtasks.exe) used to manage scheduled tasks.
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Identifies the creation of a suspicious ImagePath value. This could be an indication of an adversary attempting to stealthily persist or escalate privileges through abnormal service creation.
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Identifies suspicious processes being spawned by the JetBrain TeamCity process. This activity could be related to JetBrains remote code execution vulnerabilities.
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Suspicious LSASS Access via MalSecLogon
Identifies suspicious access to LSASS handle from a call trace pointing to seclogon.dll and with a suspicious access rights value. This may indicate an attempt to leak an LSASS handle via abusing the Secondary Logon service in preparation for credential access.
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Identifies potential abuse of the Microsoft Diagnostics Troubleshooting Wizard (MSDT) to proxy malicious command or binary execution via malicious process arguments.
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Identifies suspicious PowerShell execution spawning from Windows Script Host processes (cscript or wscript.exe).
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Detects deletion of print driver files by an unusual process. This may indicate a clean up attempt post successful privilege escalation via Print Spooler service related vulnerabilities.
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Identifies suspicious process access events from an unknown memory region. Endpoint security solutions usually hook userland Windows APIs in order to decide if the code that is being executed is malicious or not. It's possible to bypass hooked functions by writing malicious functions that call syscalls directly.
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Suspicious Process Creation CallTrace
Identifies when a process is created and immediately accessed from an unknown memory code region and by the same parent process. This may indicate a code injection attempt.
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Identifies suspicious psexec activity which is executing from the psexec service that has been renamed, possibly to evade detection.
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Identifies suspicious Image Loading of the Remote Desktop Services ActiveX Client (mstscax), this may indicate the presence of RDP lateral movement capability.
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Identifies remote access to the registry using an account with Backup Operators group membership. This may indicate an attempt to exfiltrate credentials by dumping the Security Account Manager (SAM) registry hive in preparation for credential access and privileges elevation.
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Identifies scrobj.dll loaded into unusual Microsoft processes. This usually means a malicious scriptlet is being executed in the target process.
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Suspicious Service was Installed in the System
Identifies the creation of a new Windows service with suspicious Service command values. Windows services typically run as SYSTEM and can be used for privilege escalation and persistence.
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Suspicious Startup Shell Folder Modification
Identifies suspicious startup shell folder modifications to change the default Startup directory in order to bypass detections monitoring file creation in the Windows Startup folder.
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Suspicious WerFault Child Process
A suspicious WerFault child process was detected, which may indicate an attempt to run via the SilentProcessExit registry key manipulation. Verify process details such as command line, network connections and file writes.
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Identifies the execution of the Windows Command Shell process (cmd.exe) with suspicious argument values. This behavior is often observed during malware installation.
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Suspicious WMI Event Subscription Created
Detects the creation of a WMI Event Subscription. Attackers can abuse this mechanism for persistence or to elevate to SYSTEM privileges.
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Identifies a suspicious image load (wmiutils.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity where child processes are spawned via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This technique can be used to execute code and evade traditional parent/child processes spawned from Microsoft Office products.
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Identifies WMIC allowlist bypass techniques by alerting on suspicious execution of scripts. When WMIC loads scripting libraries it may be indicative of an allowlist bypass.
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Temporarily Scheduled Task Creation
Indicates the creation and deletion of a scheduled task within a short time interval. Adversaries can use these to proxy malicious execution via the schedule service and perform clean up.
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UAC Bypass Attempt via Elevated COM Internet Explorer Add-On Installer
Identifies User Account Control (UAC) bypass attempts by abusing an elevated COM Interface to launch a malicious program. Attackers may attempt to bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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Identifies attempts to bypass User Account Control (UAC) via DLL side-loading. Attackers may attempt to bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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UAC Bypass Attempt with IEditionUpgradeManager Elevated COM Interface
Identifies attempts to bypass User Account Control (UAC) by abusing an elevated COM Interface to launch a rogue Windows ClipUp program. Attackers may attempt to bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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Identifies User Account Control (UAC) bypass attempts via the ICMLuaUtil Elevated COM interface. Attackers may attempt to bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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UAC Bypass via Windows Firewall Snap-In Hijack
Oct 15, 2024 · Domain: Endpoint OS: Windows Use Case: Threat Detection Tactic: Privilege Escalation Tactic: Defense Evasion Resources: Investigation Guide Data Source: Elastic Endgame Data Source: Elastic Defend Data Source: Sysmon Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Data Source: SentinelOne ·Identifies attempts to bypass User Account Control (UAC) by hijacking the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Windows Firewall snap-in. Attackers bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.
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Untrusted DLL Loaded by Azure AD Sync Service
Identifies the load of a DLL without a valid code signature by the Azure AD Sync process, which may indicate an attempt to persist or collect sensitive credentials passing through the Azure AD synchronization server.
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Unusual Child Processes of RunDLL32
Identifies child processes of unusual instances of RunDLL32 where the command line parameters were suspicious. Misuse of RunDLL32 could indicate malicious activity.
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Unusual Executable File Creation by a System Critical Process
Identifies an unexpected executable file being created or modified by a Windows system critical process, which may indicate activity related to remote code execution or other forms of exploitation.
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Unusual Execution via Microsoft Common Console File
Identifies the execution of a child process from a Microsoft Common Console file. Adversaries may embed a malicious command in an MSC file in order to trick victims into executing malicious commands.
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Identifies suspicious creation of Alternate Data Streams on highly targeted files. This is uncommon for legitimate files and sometimes done by adversaries to hide malware.
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Identifies an unexpected file being modified by dns.exe, the process responsible for Windows DNS Server services, which may indicate activity related to remote code execution or other forms of exploitation.
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Identifies network activity from unexpected system applications. This may indicate adversarial activity as these applications are often leveraged by adversaries to execute code and evade detection.
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Unusual Network Connection via DllHost
Identifies unusual instances of dllhost.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial Command and Control activity.
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Identifies unusual instances of rundll32.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial Command and Control activity.
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Identifies a suspicious parent child process relationship with cmd.exe descending from an unusual process.
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Identifies processes modifying the services registry key directly, instead of through the expected Windows APIs. This could be an indication of an adversary attempting to stealthily persist through abnormal service creation or modification of an existing service.
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Detects unusual Print Spooler service (spoolsv.exe) child processes. This may indicate an attempt to exploit privilege escalation vulnerabilities related to the Printing Service on Windows.
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Identifies network activity from unexpected system applications. This may indicate adversarial activity as these applications are often leveraged by adversaries to execute code and evade detection.
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Identifies unusual child processes of Service Host (svchost.exe) that traditionally do not spawn any child processes. This may indicate a code injection or an equivalent form of exploitation.
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Identifies a user being added to a privileged group in Active Directory. Privileged accounts and groups in Active Directory are those to which powerful rights, privileges, and permissions are granted that allow them to perform nearly any action in Active Directory and on domain-joined systems.
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Identifies the registration of a Werfault Debugger. Attackers may abuse this mechanism to execute malicious payloads every time the utility is executed with the "-pr" parameter.
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Identifies suspicious use of whoami.exe which displays user, group, and privileges information for the user who is currently logged on to the local system.
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Windows Script Executing PowerShell
Identifies a PowerShell process launched by either cscript.exe or wscript.exe. Observing Windows scripting processes executing a PowerShell script, may be indicative of malicious activity.
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Identifies use of the built-in Windows script interpreters (cscript.exe or wscript.exe) being used to execute a process via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This may be indicative of malicious activity.
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Windows Service Installed via an Unusual Client
Identifies the creation of a Windows service by an unusual client process. Services may be created with administrator privileges but are executed under SYSTEM privileges, so an adversary may also use a service to escalate privileges from administrator to SYSTEM.
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Detects changes to the registry that indicates the install of a new Windows Subsystem for Linux distribution by name. Adversaries may enable and use WSL for Linux to avoid detection.
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WMI Incoming Lateral Movement
Identifies processes executed via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) on a remote host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement, but could be noisy if administrators use WMI to remotely manage hosts.
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Identifies the load of a remote library by the WPS Office promecefpluginhost.exe executable. This may indicate the successful exploitation of CVE-2024-7262 or CVE-2024-7263 via DLL hijack abusing the ksoqing custom protocol handler.
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Identifies network connections to the standard Kerberos port from an unusual process. On Windows, the only process that normally performs Kerberos traffic from a domain joined host is lsass.exe.
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Identifies an executable or script file remotely downloaded via a TeamViewer transfer session.
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A suspicious SolarWinds child process was detected, which may indicate an attempt to execute malicious programs.
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Identifies the deletion of backup files, saved using third-party software, by a process outside of the backup suite. Adversaries may delete Backup files to ensure that recovery from a ransomware attack is less likely.
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Adversaries can use the autostart mechanism provided by the Local Security Authority (LSA) authentication packages for privilege escalation or persistence by placing a reference to a binary in the Windows registry. The binary will then be executed by SYSTEM when the authentication packages are loaded.
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Identifies port monitor and print processor registry modifications. Adversaries may abuse port monitor and print processors to run malicious DLLs during system boot that will be executed as SYSTEM for privilege escalation and/or persistence, if permissions allow writing a fully-qualified pathname for that DLL.
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Detects attempts to exploit privilege escalation vulnerabilities related to the Print Spooler service including CVE-2020-1048 and CVE-2020-1337.
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Identifies the modification of the Microsoft Office "Office Test" Registry key, a registry location that can be used to specify a DLL which will be executed every time an MS Office application is started. Attackers can abuse this to gain persistence on a compromised host.
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Identifies a potential forced authentication using related SMB named pipes. Attackers may attempt to force targets to authenticate to a host controlled by them to capture hashes or enable relay attacks.
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Identifies LSASS loading an unsigned or untrusted DLL. Windows Security Support Provider (SSP) DLLs are loaded into LSSAS process at system start. Once loaded into the LSA, SSP DLLs have access to encrypted and plaintext passwords that are stored in Windows, such as any logged-on user's Domain password or smart card PINs.
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Adversaries may implement command and control (C2) communications that use common web services to hide their activity. This attack technique is typically targeted at an organization and uses web services common to the victim network, which allows the adversary to blend into legitimate traffic activity. These popular services are typically targeted since they have most likely been used before compromise, which helps malicious traffic blend in.
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Identifies parent process spoofing used to thwart detection. Adversaries may spoof the parent process identifier (PPID) of a new process to evade process-monitoring defenses or to elevate privileges.
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Identifies the creation or change of a Windows executable file over network shares. Adversaries may transfer tools or other files between systems in a compromised environment.
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Potential SharpRDP Behavior
Identifies potential behavior of SharpRDP, which is a tool that can be used to perform authenticated command execution against a remote target via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) for the purposes of lateral movement.
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Identifies the execution of a file that was created by the virtual system process. This may indicate lateral movement via network file shares.
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Identifies potentially suspicious processes that are not trusted or living-off-the-land binaries (LOLBin) making Server Message Block (SMB) network connections over port 445. Windows File Sharing is typically implemented over SMB, which communicates between hosts using port 445. Legitimate connections are generally established by the kernel (PID 4). This rule helps to detect processes that might be port scanners, exploits, or user-level processes attempting lateral movement within the network by leveraging SMB connections.
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Identifies run key or startup key registry modifications. In order to survive reboots and other system interrupts, attackers will modify run keys within the registry or leverage startup folder items as a form of persistence.
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Suspicious PowerShell Engine ImageLoad
Identifies the PowerShell engine being invoked by unexpected processes. Rather than executing PowerShell functionality with powershell.exe, some attackers do this to operate more stealthily.
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Identifies an unsigned library created in the last 5 minutes and subsequently loaded by a shared windows service (svchost). Adversaries may use this technique to maintain persistence or run with System privileges.
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Unsigned DLL Side-Loading from a Suspicious Folder
Identifies a Windows trusted program running from locations often abused by adversaries to masquerade as a trusted program and loading a recently dropped DLL. This behavior may indicate an attempt to evade defenses via side-loading a malicious DLL within the memory space of a signed processes.
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ROT Encoded Python Script Execution
Identifies the execution of a Python script that uses the ROT cipher for letters substitution. Adversaries may use this method to encode and obfuscate part of their malicious code in legit python packages.
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Persistence via a Windows Installer
Identifies when the Windows installer process msiexec.exe creates a new persistence entry via scheduled tasks or startup.
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A supervised machine learning model (ProblemChild) has identified a suspicious Windows process event with low probability of it being malicious activity. Alternatively, the model's blocklist identified the event as being malicious.
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Identifies access attempts to the LSASS handle, which may indicate an attempt to dump credentials from LSASS memory.
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Suspicious File Downloaded from Google Drive
Identifies suspicious file download activity from a Google Drive URL. This could indicate an attempt to deliver phishing payloads via a trusted webservice.
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Downloaded Shortcut Files
Identifies .lnk shortcut file downloaded from outside the local network. These shortcut files are commonly used in phishing campaigns.
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Downloaded URL Files
Identifies .url shortcut files downloaded from outside the local network. These shortcut files are commonly used in phishing campaigns.
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Identifies an executable created by a Microsoft Office application and subsequently executed. These processes are often launched via scripts inside documents or during exploitation of Microsoft Office applications.
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Identifies downloads of executable and archive files via the Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). Adversaries could leverage Windows BITS transfer jobs to download remote payloads.
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Identifies the creation or modification of a medium-size registry hive file on a Server Message Block (SMB) share, which may indicate an exfiltration attempt of a previously dumped Security Account Manager (SAM) registry hive for credential extraction on an attacker-controlled system.
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Suspicious HTML File Creation
Identifies the execution of a browser process to open an HTML file with high entropy and size. Adversaries may smuggle data and files past content filters by hiding malicious payloads inside of seemingly benign HTML files.
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This rule is triggered when CVEs collected from the Rapid7 Threat Command Integration have a match against vulnerabilities that were found in the customer environment.
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Identifies Component Object Model (COM) hijacking via registry modification. Adversaries may establish persistence by executing malicious content triggered by hijacked references to COM objects.
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Identifies use of the Windows Management Instrumentation StdRegProv (registry provider) to modify commonly abused registry locations for persistence.
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Identifies attempts to access sensitive registry hives which contain credentials from the registry backup folder.
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Potential Ransomware Note File Dropped via SMB
Identifies an incoming SMB connection followed by the creation of a file with a name similar to ransomware note files. This may indicate a remote ransomware attack via the SMB protocol.
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Suspicious File Renamed via SMB
Identifies an incoming SMB connection followed by a suspicious file rename operation. This may indicate a remote ransomware attack via the SMB protocol.
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Suspicious Inter-Process Communication via Outlook
Detects Inter-Process Communication with Outlook via Component Object Model from an unusual process. Adversaries may target user email to collect sensitive information or send email on their behalf via API.
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This rule is triggered when a hash indicator from the Threat Intel Filebeat module or integrations has a match against an event that contains file hashes, such as antivirus alerts, process creation, library load, and file operation events.
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This rule is triggered when an IP address indicator from the Threat Intel Filebeat module or integrations has a match against a network event.
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This rule is triggered when a URL indicator from the Threat Intel Filebeat module or integrations has a match against an event that contains URL data, like DNS events, network logs, etc.
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This rule is triggered when a Windows registry indicator from the Threat Intel Filebeat module or integrations has a match against an event that contains registry data.
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Potential Masquerading as Communication Apps
Identifies suspicious instances of communications apps, both unsigned and renamed ones, that can indicate an attempt to conceal malicious activity, bypass security features such as allowlists, or trick users into executing malware.
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Delayed Execution via Ping
Identifies the execution of commonly abused Windows utilities via a delayed Ping execution. This behavior is often observed during malware installation and is consistent with an attacker attempting to evade detection.
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Execution from a Removable Media with Network Connection
Identifies process execution from a removable media and by an unusual process. Adversaries may move onto systems, possibly those on disconnected or air-gapped networks, by copying malware to removable media and taking advantage of Autorun features when the media is inserted into a system and executes.
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Identifies an attempt to load a revoked or expired driver. Adversaries may bring outdated drivers with vulnerabilities to gain code execution in kernel mode or abuse revoked certificates to sign their drivers.
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Generates a detection alert for each external alert written to the configured indices. Enabling this rule allows you to immediately begin investigating external alerts in the app.
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Identifies the load of a driver with an original file name and signature values that were observed for the first time during the last 30 days. This rule type can help baseline drivers installation within your environment.
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Potential Command and Control via Internet Explorer
Identifies instances of Internet Explorer (iexplore.exe) being started via the Component Object Model (COM) making unusual network connections. Adversaries could abuse Internet Explorer via COM to avoid suspicious processes making network connections and bypass host-based firewall restrictions.
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Potential Enumeration via Active Directory Web Service
Identifies processes loading Active Directory related modules followed by a network connection to the ADWS dedicated TCP port. Adversaries may abuse the ADWS Windows service that allows Active Directory to be queried via this web service.
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Identifies executables with names resembling legitimate business applications but lacking signatures from the original developer. Attackers may trick users into downloading malicious executables that masquerade as legitimate applications via malicious ads, forum posts, and tutorials, effectively gaining initial access.
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Identifies a potential exploitation of InstallerTakeOver (CVE-2021-41379) default PoC execution. Successful exploitation allows an unprivileged user to escalate privileges to SYSTEM.
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Identifies remote access to the registry to potentially dump credential data from the Security Account Manager (SAM) registry hive in preparation for credential access and privileges elevation.
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Potential Remote File Execution via MSIEXEC
Identifies the execution of the built-in Windows Installer, msiexec.exe, to install a remote package. Adversaries may abuse msiexec.exe to launch local or network accessible MSI files.
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Potential Windows Session Hijacking via CcmExec
This detection rule identifies when 'SCNotification.exe' loads an untrusted DLL, which is a potential indicator of an attacker attempt to hijack/impersonate a Windows user session.
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Privileges Elevation via Parent Process PID Spoofing
Identifies parent process spoofing used to create an elevated child process. Adversaries may spoof the parent process identifier (PPID) of a new process to evade process-monitoring defenses or to elevate privileges.
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Process Created with a Duplicated Token
Identifies the creation of a process impersonating the token of another user logon session. Adversaries may create a new process with a different token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
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Process Created with an Elevated Token
Identifies the creation of a process running as SYSTEM and impersonating a Windows core binary privileges. Adversaries may create a new process with a different token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
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Identifies powershell.exe being used to download an executable file from an untrusted remote destination.
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Remote XSL Script Execution via COM
Identifies the execution of a hosted XSL script using the Microsoft.XMLDOM COM interface via Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity to execute malicious JScript or VBScript on the system.
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Identifies files written or modified in the startup folder by unsigned processes. Adversaries may abuse this technique to maintain persistence in an environment.
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The malware known as SUNBURST targets the SolarWind's Orion business software for command and control. This rule detects post-exploitation command and control activity of the SUNBURST backdoor.
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Identifies attempt to load an untrusted driver. Adversaries may modify code signing policies to enable execution of unsigned or self-signed code.
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Unusual Discovery Signal Alert with Unusual Process Command Line
This rule leverages alert data from various Discovery building block rules to alert on signals with unusual unique host.id, user.id and process.command_line entries.
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Unusual Discovery Signal Alert with Unusual Process Executable
This rule leverages Discovery building block rule alert data to alert on signals with unusual unique host.id, user.id and process.executable entries.
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Veeam Backup Library Loaded by Unusual Process
Identifies potential credential decrypt operations by PowerShell or unsigned processes using the Veeam.Backup.Common.dll library. Attackers can use Veeam Credentials to target backups as part of destructive operations such as Ransomware attacks.
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WPAD Service Exploit
Identifies probable exploitation of the Web Proxy Auto-Discovery Protocol (WPAD) service. Attackers who have access to the local network or upstream DNS traffic can inject malicious JavaScript to the WPAD service which can lead to a full system compromise.
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Potential Process Herpaderping Attempt
Identifies process execution followed by a file overwrite of an executable by the same parent process. This may indicate an evasion attempt to execute malicious code in a stealthy way.
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This rule is triggered when indicators from the Threat Intel Filebeat module (v8.x) has a match against local file or network observations. This rule was deprecated. See the Setup section for more information and alternative rules.
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This rule is triggered when indicators from the Threat Intel integrations have a match against local file or network observations. This rule was deprecated. See the Setup section for more information and alternative rules.
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