ID | Technique | Tactic |
---|---|---|
T1562.001 | Disable or Modify Tools | Defense Evasion |
T1562 | Impair Defenses | Defense Evasion |
Detection: Windows Terminating Lsass Process
Description
The following analytic detects a suspicious process attempting to terminate the Lsass.exe process. It leverages Sysmon EventCode 10 logs to identify processes granted PROCESS_TERMINATE access to Lsass.exe. This activity is significant because Lsass.exe is a critical process responsible for enforcing security policies and handling user credentials. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could indicate an attempt to perform credential dumping, privilege escalation, or evasion of security policies, potentially leading to unauthorized access and persistence within the environment.
Search
1`sysmon` EventCode=10 TargetImage=*lsass.exe GrantedAccess = 0x1
2| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by SourceImage, TargetImage, TargetProcessId, SourceProcessId, GrantedAccess CallTrace, dest
3| rename dest as dest
4| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
5| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
6| `windows_terminating_lsass_process_filter`
Data Source
Name | Platform | Sourcetype | Source | Supported App |
---|---|---|---|---|
Sysmon EventID 10 | Windows | 'xmlwineventlog' |
'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational' |
N/A |
Macros Used
Name | Value |
---|---|
security_content_ctime | convert timeformat="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S" ctime($field$) |
windows_terminating_lsass_process_filter | search * |
windows_terminating_lsass_process_filter
is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.
Annotations
Default Configuration
This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:
Setting | Value |
---|---|
Disabled | true |
Cron Schedule | 0 * * * * |
Earliest Time | -70m@m |
Latest Time | -10m@m |
Schedule Window | auto |
Creates Risk Event | True |
Implementation
This search requires Sysmon Logs and a Sysmon configuration, which includes EventCode 10 for lsass.exe. This search uses an input macro named sysmon
. We strongly recommend that you specify your environment-specific configurations (index, source, sourcetype, etc.) for Windows Sysmon logs. Replace the macro definition with configurations for your Splunk environment. The search also uses a post-filter macro designed to filter out known false positives.
Known False Positives
unknown
Associated Analytic Story
Risk Based Analytics (RBA)
Risk Message | Risk Score | Impact | Confidence |
---|---|---|---|
a process $SourceImage$ terminates Lsass process in $dest$ | 64 | 80 | 80 |
References
Detection Testing
Test Type | Status | Dataset | Source | Sourcetype |
---|---|---|---|---|
Validation | ✅ Passing | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Unit | ✅ Passing | Dataset | XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational |
xmlwineventlog |
Integration | ✅ Passing | Dataset | XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational |
xmlwineventlog |
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: GitHub | Version: 3