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Description

The following analytic detects process injection into Notepad.exe using Sysmon EventCode 10. It identifies suspicious GrantedAccess requests (0x40 and 0x1fffff) to Notepad.exe, excluding common system paths like System32, Syswow64, and Program Files. This behavior is often associated with the SliverC2 framework by BishopFox. Monitoring this activity is crucial as it may indicate an initial payload attempting to execute malicious code within Notepad.exe. If confirmed malicious, this could allow attackers to execute arbitrary code, potentially leading to privilege escalation or persistent access within the environment.

  • Type: Anomaly

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

  • Last Updated: 2024-05-14
  • Author: Michael Haag, Splunk
  • ID: b8340d0f-ba48-4391-bea7-9e793c5aae36

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1055 Process Injection Defense Evasion, Privilege Escalation
T1055.002 Portable Executable Injection Defense Evasion, Privilege Escalation
Kill Chain Phase
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.AE
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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`sysmon` EventCode=10 TargetImage IN (*\\notepad.exe) NOT (SourceImage IN ("*\\system32\\*","*\\syswow64\\*","*\\Program Files\\*")) GrantedAccess IN ("0x40","0x1fffff") 
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by dest SourceImage TargetImage GrantedAccess CallTrace 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_process_injection_into_notepad_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: windows_process_injection_into_notepad_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
  • dest
  • SourceImage
  • TargetImage
  • GrantedAccess
  • CallTrace

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.

Known False Positives

False positives may be present based on SourceImage paths. If removing the paths is important, realize svchost and many native binaries inject into notepad consistently. Restrict or tune as needed.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
32.0 40 80 An instance of $SourceImage$ injecting into $TargetImage$ was identified on endpoint $dest$.

: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