Detection: Windows Remote Image Load

Updated Date: 2026-04-13 ID: 041aaae4-03de-465c-b9cb-9ed0d1e10454 Author: Raven Tait, Splunk Type: Anomaly Product: Splunk Enterprise Security

Description

The following analytic detects image load events where a process loads a file from a remote share path. This activity is significant because remote DLL or image loading can be abused for execution, defense evasion, or lateral movement while leaving the payload hosted on another system. If confirmed malicious, an attacker may be loading code into a local process from attacker-controlled infrastructure.

Search

 1`sysmon`
 2EventID=7
 3ImageLoaded="\\\\*"
 4
 5| fillnull
 6
 7| stats count min(_time) as firstTime
 8              max(_time) as lastTime
 9  by Computer ImageLoaded EventID dest loaded_file loaded_file_path process_exec
10     process_guid process_hash process_id process_name process_path
11     service_dll_signature_exists service_dll_signature_verified signature_id user_id
12     vendor_product
13
14
15| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
16
17| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
18
19| `windows_remote_image_load_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
Sysmon EventID 7	Windows	`'XmlWinEventLog'`	`'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational'`

Macros Used

Name	Value
security_content_ctime	`convert timeformat="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S" ctime($field$)`
windows_remote_image_load_filter	`search *`

windows_remote_image_load_filter is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Annotations

- MITRE ATT&CK

+ Kill Chain Phases

+ NIST

+ CIS

- Threat Actors

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1129	Shared Modules	Execution
T1059	Command and Scripting Interpreter	Execution
T1068	Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	Privilege Escalation
T1203	Exploitation for Client Execution	Execution

Exploitation

Installation

DE.AE

CIS 10

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Setting	Value
Disabled	true
Cron Schedule	`0 * * * *`
Earliest Time	`-70m@m`
Latest Time	`-10m@m`
Schedule Window	`auto`
Creates Risk Event	True

This configuration file applies to all detections of type anomaly. These detections will use Risk Based Alerting.

Implementation

The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the Processes node of the Endpoint data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process.

Known False Positives

Legitimate software updates or remote imaging tools may load images from shared folders. Filter these detections for approved applications to reduce false positives.

Associated Analytic Story

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Risk Message:

Potential remote image load activity observed on $dest$ via $ImageLoaded$.

Risk Object	Risk Object Type	Risk Score	Threat Objects
dest	system	20	No Threat Objects

References

Detection Testing

Test Type	Status	Dataset	Source	Sourcetype
Validation	✅ Passing	N/A	N/A	N/A
Unit	✅ Passing	Dataset	`XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational`	`XmlWinEventLog`
Integration	✅ Passing	Dataset	`XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational`	`XmlWinEventLog`

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub | Version: 1