Try in Splunk Security Cloud

Description

The following analytic identifies a suspicious parent process of explorer.exe. Explorer is usually executed by userinit.exe that will exit after execution that causes the main explorer.exe no parent process. Some malware like qakbot spawn another explorer.exe to inject its code. This TTP detection is a good indicator that a process spawning explorer.exe might inject code or masquerading its parent child process to evade detections.

  • Type: TTP
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2022-10-20
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 61490da9-52a1-4855-a0c5-28233c88c481

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
  • Installation
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


1
2
3
4
5
6



| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name IN("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "regsvr32.exe") AND Processes.process_name = "explorer.exe" by Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.process Processes.user Processes.dest Processes.parent_process_id 
| `drop_dm_object_name("Processes")` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
|`security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_masquerading_explorer_as_child_process_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: windows_masquerading_explorer_as_child_process_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

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

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
81.0 90 90 explorer.exe hash a suspicious parent process $parent_process_name$ 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

source | version: 1