Suspicious DLL Loaded for Persistence or Privilege Escalation

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Suspicious DLL Loaded for Persistence or Privilege Escalation

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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.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*
  • 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:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Persistence
  • Privilege Escalation

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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## Config

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule query

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library where dll.name : ( "wlbsctrl.dll", "wbemcomn.dll",
"WptsExtensions.dll", "Tsmsisrv.dll", "TSVIPSrv.dll",
"Msfte.dll", "wow64log.dll", "WindowsCoreDeviceInfo.dll",
"Ualapi.dll", "wlanhlp.dll", "phoneinfo.dll", "EdgeGdi.dll",
"cdpsgshims.dll", "windowsperformancerecordercontrol.dll",
"diagtrack_win.dll" ) and not (dll.code_signature.subject_name :
("Microsoft Windows", "Microsoft Corporation") and
dll.code_signature.status : "trusted")

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 3 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.14.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    library where dll.name : ( "wlbsctrl.dll", "wbemcomn.dll",
    "WptsExtensions.dll", "Tsmsisrv.dll", "TSVIPSrv.dll",
    "Msfte.dll", "wow64log.dll", "WindowsCoreDeviceInfo.dll",
    "Ualapi.dll", "wlanhlp.dll", "phoneinfo.dll", "EdgeGdi.dll",
    "cdpsgshims.dll", "windowsperformancerecordercontrol.dll",
    "diagtrack_win.dll" ) and not (dll.code_signature.subject_name :
    "Microsoft Windows" and dll.code_signature.status : "trusted")