Execution of Persistent Suspicious Program

Identifies execution of suspicious persistent programs (scripts, rundll32, etc.) by looking at process lineage and command line usage.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Persistence

Version: 2 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

edit

/* userinit followed by explorer followed by early child process of
explorer (unlikely to be launched interactively) within 1m */ sequence
by host.id, user.name with maxspan=1m [process where event.type in
("start", "process_started") and process.name : "userinit.exe" and
process.parent.name : "winlogon.exe"] [process where event.type in
("start", "process_started") and process.name : "explorer.exe"]
[process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.parent.name : "explorer.exe" and /* add suspicious programs
here */ process.pe.original_file_name in ("cscript.exe",
"wscript.exe", "PowerShell.EXE",
"MSHTA.EXE", "RUNDLL32.EXE",
"REGSVR32.EXE", "RegAsm.exe",
"MSBuild.exe", "InstallUtil.exe")
and /* add potential suspicious paths here */ process.args :
("C:\\Users\\*", "C:\\ProgramData\\*", "C:\\Windows\\Temp\\*",
"C:\\Windows\\Tasks\\*", "C:\\PerfLogs\\*", "C:\\Intel\\*") ]

Threat mapping

edit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
Technique:
- Name: Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
- ID: T1547
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1547/

Rule version history

edit

Version 2 (7.12.0 release)

Formatting only

« Execution of File Written or Modified by PDF Reader Execution via Electron Child Process Node.js Module »