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Description

The following analytic detects a suspicious process creating or connecting to a potential Qakbot named pipe. It leverages Sysmon EventCodes 17 and 18, focusing on specific processes known to be abused by Qakbot and identifying randomly generated named pipes in GUID form. This activity is significant as Qakbot malware uses named pipes for inter-process communication after code injection, facilitating data theft. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could indicate a Qakbot infection, leading to unauthorized data access and potential exfiltration from the compromised host.

  • Type: Anomaly

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

  • Last Updated: 2024-05-22
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 63a2c15e-9448-43c5-a4a8-9852266aaada

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
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`sysmon` EventCode IN (17, 18) EventType IN ( "CreatePipe", "ConnectPipe") Image IN ("*\\calc.exe", "*\\notepad.exe", "*\\rdpclip.exe", "*\\explorer.exe", "*\\wermgr.exe", "*\\ping.exe", "*\\OneDriveSetup.exe", "*\\dxdiag.exe", "*\\mobsync.exe", "*\\msra.exe", "*\\xwizard.exe") 
| regex PipeName="^\\\{[0-9a-fA-F]{8}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{8}" 
| 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_qakbot_namedpipe_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: windows_app_layer_protocol_qakbot_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 $Image$ 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