Excessive number of service control start as disabled
Description
This detection targets behaviors observed when threat actors have used sc.exe to modify services. We observed malware in a honey pot spawning numerous sc.exe processes in a short period of time, presumably to impair defenses, possibly to block others from compromising the same machine. This detection will alert when we see both an excessive number of sc.exe processes launched with specific commandline arguments to disable the start of certain services.
- Type: Anomaly
- Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
- Datamodel: Endpoint
- Last Updated: 2021-06-25
- Author: Michael Hart, Splunk
- ID: 77592bec-d5cc-11eb-9e60-acde48001122
Annotations
ATT&CK
Kill Chain Phase
- Exploitation
NIST
CIS20
CVE
Search
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` distinct_count(Processes.process) as distinct_cmdlines values(Processes.process_id) as process_ids min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Processes WHERE Processes.process_name = "sc.exe" AND Processes.process="*start= disabled*" by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process Processes.process_name Processes.parent_process_id, _time span=30m
| where distinct_cmdlines >= 8
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `excessive_number_of_service_control_start_as_disabled_filter`
Macros
The SPL above uses the following Macros:
excessive_number_of_service_control_start_as_disabled_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.
Supported Add-on (TA)
List of Splunk Add-on’s tested to work with the analytic.
Required fields
List of fields required to use this analytic.
- _time
- Processes.dest
- Processes.user
- Processes.parent_process
- Processes.process_name
- Processes.process
- Processes.process_id
- Processes.parent_process_id
How To Implement
You must be ingesting data that records process activity from your hosts to populate the Endpoint data model in the Processes node. You must be ingesting logs with both the process name and command line from your endpoints. The complete process name with command-line arguments are mapped to the "process" field in the Endpoint data model.
Known False Positives
Legitimate programs and administrators will execute sc.exe with the start disabled flag. It is possible, but unlikely from the telemetry of normal Windows operation we observed, that sc.exe will be called more than seven times in a short period of time.
Associated Analytic Story
RBA
Risk Score | Impact | Confidence | Message |
---|---|---|---|
80.0 | 80 | 100 | An excessive amount of $process_name$ was executed on $dest$ attempting to disable services. |
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
- https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/sc-create
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/001/
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