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Description

The following analytic identifies the suspicious child process of calc.exe due to dll side loading technique to execute another executable. This technique was seen in qakbot malware that uses dll side loading technique to calc applications to load its malicious dll code. The malicious dll that abuses dll side loading technique will load the actual qakbot loader dll using regsvr32.exe application. This TTP is a good indicator of qakbot since the calc.exe will not load other child processes aside from win32calc.exe.

  • Type: Anomaly
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2022-10-20
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 295ca9ed-e97b-4520-90f7-dfb6469902e1

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1574.002 DLL Side-Loading Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Defense Evasion
T1574 Hijack Execution Flow Persistence, Privilege Escalation, Defense Evasion
Kill Chain Phase
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 3
  • CIS 5
  • CIS 16
CVE 


1
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| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where (Processes.parent_process_name = "calc.exe")  AND Processes.process_name != "win32calc.exe" by Processes.parent_process Processes.process_name Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.process Processes.user Processes.dest 
| `drop_dm_object_name("Processes")` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_dll_side_loading_process_child_of_calc_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: windows_dll_side-loading_process_child_of_calc_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

  • _time
  • Processes.dest
  • Processes.user
  • Processes.parent_process_name
  • Processes.parent_process
  • Processes.original_file_name
  • Processes.process_name
  • Processes.process
  • Processes.process_id
  • Processes.parent_process_path
  • Processes.process_path
  • Processes.parent_process_id

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search you need to be ingesting information on process that include the name of the process responsible for the changes from your endpoints into the Endpoint datamodel in the Processes node. In addition, confirm the latest CIM App 4.20 or higher is installed and the latest TA for the endpoint product.

Known False Positives

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
81.0 90 90 calc.exe has a child process $process_name$ in $dest$

:information_source: The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

Reference

Test Dataset

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

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