Detection: Office Product Spawn CMD Process

Description

The following analytic detects an Office product spawning a CMD process, which is indicative of a macro executing shell commands to download or run malicious code. This detection leverages data from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents, focusing on process and parent process names. This activity is significant as it often signals the execution of malicious payloads, such as those seen in Trickbot spear-phishing campaigns. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could lead to unauthorized code execution, potentially compromising the system and allowing further malicious activities.

Search

1
2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where (Processes.parent_process_name = "winword.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name= "excel.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "powerpnt.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name= "onenote.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "onenotem.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "onenoteviewer.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "onenoteim.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "msaccess.exe" OR  Processes.parent_process_name="Graph.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name="winproj.exe") `process_cmd` by  Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.user Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name 
3| `drop_dm_object_name("Processes")` 
4| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
5|`security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
6| `office_product_spawn_cmd_process_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
CrowdStrike ProcessRollup2	N/A	'crowdstrike:events:sensor'	'crowdstrike'
Sysmon EventID 1	Windows	'xmlwineventlog'	'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational'
Windows Event Log Security 4688	Windows	'xmlwineventlog'	'XmlWinEventLog:Security'

Macros Used

Annotations

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Implementation

The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the Processes node of the Endpoint data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process.

Known False Positives

IT or network admin may create an document automation that will run shell script.

Associated Analytic Story

• AgentTesla

• Azorult

• CVE-2023-21716 Word RTF Heap Corruption

• CVE-2023-36884 Office and Windows HTML RCE Vulnerability

• DarkCrystal RAT

• NjRAT

• PlugX

• Qakbot

• Remcos

• Trickbot

• Warzone RAT

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

References

• https://twitter.com/cyb3rops/status/1416050325870587910?s=21

• https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/02cbc1ab80695fc12ff8822b926957c3a600247b9ca412a137f69cb5716c8781/

• https://www.fortinet.com/blog/threat-research/latest-remcos-rat-phishing

• https://www.trustwave.com/en-us/resources/blogs/spiderlabs-blog/trojanized-onenote-document-leads-to-formbook-malware/

Detection Testing

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: 7