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Description

this search is to detect a suspicious office product process that spawn cmd child process. This is commonly seen in a ms office product having macro to execute shell command to download or execute malicious lolbin relative to its malicious code. This is seen in trickbot spear phishing doc where it execute shell cmd to run mshta payload.

  • Type: TTP
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2023-07-11
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: b8b19420-e892-11eb-9244-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 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 Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.user Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name 
| `drop_dm_object_name("Processes")` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
|`security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `office_product_spawn_cmd_process_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: office_product_spawn_cmd_process_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
  • Processes.dest
  • Processes.user
  • Processes.parent_process_name
  • Processes.parent_process
  • Processes.original_file_name
  • Processes.process_name
  • Processes.process
  • Processes.process_id
  • Processes.parent_process_path
  • Processes.process_path
  • Processes.parent_process_id

How To Implement

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

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
56.0 70 80 an office product parent process $parent_process_name$ spawn child process $process_name$ 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: 5