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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: 2022-02-15
  • 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
  • Exploitation
NIST
CIS20
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") `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.

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_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

To successfully implement this search you need to be ingesting information on process that include the name of the process responsible for the changes from your endpoints into the Endpoint datamodel in the Processes node. In addition, confirm the latest CIM App 4.20 or higher is installed and the latest TA for the endpoint product.

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: 4