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Description

The following analytic detects excessive usage of the sc.exe service utility on a host machine. It leverages Sysmon EventCode 1 logs to identify instances where sc.exe is executed more frequently than normal within a 15-minute window. This behavior is significant as it is commonly associated with ransomware, cryptocurrency miners, and other malware attempting to create, modify, delete, or disable services, potentially related to security applications or for privilege escalation. If confirmed malicious, this activity could allow attackers to manipulate critical services, leading to system compromise or disruption of security defenses.

  • Type: Anomaly

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

  • Last Updated: 2024-05-19
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: cb6b339e-d4c6-11eb-a026-acde48001122

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1569 System Services Execution
T1569.002 Service Execution Execution
Kill Chain Phase
  • Installation
NIST
  • DE.AE
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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`sysmon` EventCode = 1 process_name = "sc.exe" 
|  bucket _time span=15m 
| stats values(process) as process count as numScExe by dest, _time 
|  eventstats avg(numScExe) as avgScExe, stdev(numScExe) as stdScExe, count as numSlots by dest 
|  eval upperThreshold=(avgScExe + stdScExe *3) 
|  eval isOutlier=if(avgScExe > 5 and avgScExe >= upperThreshold, 1, 0) 
|  search isOutlier=1 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `excessive_usage_of_sc_service_utility_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: excessive_usage_of_sc_service_utility_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
  • EventCode
  • process_name
  • process

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. Tune and filter known instances where renamed taskkill.exe may be used.

Known False Positives

excessive execution of sc.exe is quite suspicious since it can modify or execute app in high privilege permission.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
25.0 50 50 Excessive Usage Of SC Service Utility

: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