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Description

The following analytic detects the wermgr.exe process creating or connecting to a named pipe. It leverages Sysmon EventCodes 17 and 18 to identify these actions. This activity is significant because wermgr.exe, a legitimate Windows OS Problem Reporting application, is often abused by malware such as Trickbot and Qakbot to execute malicious code. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could indicate that an attacker has injected code into wermgr.exe, potentially allowing them to communicate covertly, escalate privileges, or persist within the environment.

  • Type: Anomaly

  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud

  • Last Updated: 2024-05-24
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 2f3a4092-548b-421c-9caa-84918e1787ef

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1071 Application Layer Protocol Command And Control
Kill Chain Phase
  • Command and Control
NIST
  • DE.AE
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


1
2
3
4
5



`sysmon` EventCode IN (17, 18) Image= "*\\wermgr.exe" EventType IN ( "CreatePipe", "ConnectPipe") 
| stats  min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime count by Image EventType ProcessGuid ProcessId PipeName SecurityID EventCode dest UserID 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_app_layer_protocol_wermgr_connect_to_namedpipe_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: windows_app_layer_protocol_wermgr_connect_to_namedpipe_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
  • Image
  • EventType
  • ProcessGuid
  • ProcessId
  • PipeName
  • dest
  • UserID
  • SecurityID

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name, pipename, processguid and named pipe event type from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA.

Known False Positives

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
49.0 70 70 wermgr.exe process is creating or connecting to a named pipe $PipeName$ 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

source | version: 2