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Description

This search is to detect a suspicious MS office application that drops or creates executables or scripts in a Windows Operating System. This behavior is commonly seen in spear phishing office attachment where it drop malicious files or script to compromised the host. It might be some normal macro may drop script or tools as part of automation but still this behavior is reallly suspicious and not commonly seen in normal office application

  • Type: TTP
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2023-02-15
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Michael Haag, Splunk, TheLawsOfChaos, Github
  • ID: 73ce70c4-146d-11ec-9184-acde48001122

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1566 Phishing Initial Access
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment Initial Access
Kill Chain Phase
  • Delivery
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name IN ("winword.exe","excel.exe","powerpnt.exe","mspub.exe","visio.exe","wordpad.exe","wordview.exe","onenote.exe","onenotem.exe","onenoteviewer.exe","onenoteim.exe","msaccess.exe") by _time span=1h Processes.process_id Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.dest Processes.process_guid 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
|join process_guid, _time [
| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Filesystem where Filesystem.file_name IN ("*.exe","*.dll","*.pif","*.scr","*.js","*.vbs","*.vbe","*.ps1") by _time span=1h Filesystem.dest Filesystem.file_create_time Filesystem.file_name Filesystem.process_guid Filesystem.file_path 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Filesystem)` 
| fields _time dest file_create_time file_name file_path process_name process_path process process_guid] 
| dedup file_create_time 
| table dest, process_name, process, file_create_time, file_name, file_path, process_guid 
| `office_application_drop_executable_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: office_application_drop_executable_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
  • process_name
  • file_name
  • process_guid
  • dest
  • user_id

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name, parent process, and command-line executions from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA. Tune and filter known instances where renamed rundll32.exe may be used.

Known False Positives

office macro for automation may do this behavior

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
64.0 80 80 process $process_name$ drops a file $file_name$ in host $dest$

: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: 4