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Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments

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Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments

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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: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.16.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.4.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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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*", "*.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: System Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/

Rule version history

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Version 5 (8.4.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

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\\*")

Version 3 (8.2.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 2 (8.0.0 release)

Formatting only

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