Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments

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.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

logs-endpoint.events.*
winlogbeat-*
logs-windows.*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

https://www.joesandbox.com/analysis/476188/1/html

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Defense Evasion

Version: 1

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.16.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.executable : ("?:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\control.exe",
"?:\\Windows\\System32\\control.exe") and process.command_line :
("*.jpg*", "*.png*", "*.gif*",
"*.bmp*", "*.jpeg*", "*.TIFF*",
"*.inf*", "*.dat*", "*.cpl:*/*",
"*../../..*", "*/AppData/Local/*",
"*:\\Users\\Public\\*", "*\\AppData\\Local\\*")

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
Technique:
- Name: Signed Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/

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