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Description

The following analytic identifies a LOLBAS process being executed outside of it's expected location. Processes being executed outside of expected locations may be an indicator that an adversary is attempting to evade defenses or execute malicious code. The LOLBAS project documents Windows native binaries that can be abused by threat actors to perform tasks like executing malicious code.

  • Type: TTP
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2024-04-29
  • Author: Steven Dick
  • ID: 326fdf44-b90c-4d2e-adca-1fd140b10536

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1036 Masquerading Defense Evasion
T1036.005 Match Legitimate Name or Location Defense Evasion
T1218.011 Rundll32 Defense Evasion
Kill Chain Phase
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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|  tstats `security_content_summariesonly` latest(Processes.parent_process) as parent_process, latest(Processes.process) as process, latest(Processes.process_guid) as process_guid count, min(_time) AS firstTime, max(_time) AS lastTime FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process != "unknown" AND NOT Processes.process_path IN ("*\\Program Files*","*\\PROGRA~*","*\\Windows\\System32\\*","*\\Windows\\Syswow64\\*") BY Processes.user Processes.dest Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process_path 
|`drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| lookup lolbas_file_path lolbas_file_name as process_name OUTPUT description as desc 
| lookup lolbas_file_path lolbas_file_name as process_name lolbas_file_path as process_path OUTPUT description as is_lolbas_path 
| search desc!="false" AND is_lolbas_path="false" 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_lolbas_executed_outside_expected_path_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

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

Lookups

The SPL above uses the following Lookups:

Required fields

List of fields required to use this analytic.

  • Processes.user
  • Processes.dest
  • Processes.parent_process_name
  • Processes.process_name
  • Processes.original_file_name
  • Processes.process_path

How To Implement

To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process name and process path, such as with Sysmon EID 1.

Known False Positives

Vendors will often copy system exectables to a different path for application usage.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
40.0 80 50 The user $user$ executed a LOLBAS [$process_name$] from an unexpected location on $dest$

: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: 1