Detection: Office Product Writing cab or inf

Description

The following analytic detects Office products writing .cab or .inf files, indicative of CVE-2021-40444 exploitation. It leverages the Endpoint.Processes and Endpoint.Filesystem data models to identify Office applications creating these file types. This activity is significant as it may signal an attempt to load malicious ActiveX controls and download remote payloads, a known attack vector. If confirmed malicious, this could lead to remote code execution, allowing attackers to gain control over the affected system and potentially compromise sensitive data.

Search

 1
 2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name IN ("winword.exe","excel.exe","powerpnt.exe","mspub.exe","visio.exe","wordpad.exe","wordview.exe","onenote.exe","onenotem.exe","onenoteviewer.exe","onenoteim.exe","msaccess.exe") by _time span=1h Processes.process_id Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.dest Processes.process_guid 
 3| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
 4|rename process_guid as proc_guid 
 5| join proc_guid, _time [ 
 6| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Filesystem where Filesystem.file_name IN ("*.inf","*.cab") by _time span=1h Filesystem.dest Filesystem.file_create_time Filesystem.file_name Filesystem.file_path Filesystem.process_guid 
 7| `drop_dm_object_name(Filesystem)` 
 8|rename process_guid as proc_guid 
 9| fields _time dest file_create_time file_name file_path process_name process_path process proc_guid] 
10| dedup file_create_time 
11| table dest, process_name, process, file_create_time, file_name, file_path, proc_guid 
12| `office_product_writing_cab_or_inf_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'
Sysmon EventID 11	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

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 and Filesystem node.

Known False Positives

The query is structured in a way that action (read, create) is not defined. Review the results of this query, filter, and tune as necessary. It may be necessary to generate this query specific to your endpoint product.

Associated Analytic Story

• Compromised Windows Host

• Microsoft MSHTML Remote Code Execution CVE-2021-40444

• Spearphishing Attachments

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

References

• https://twitter.com/vxunderground/status/1436326057179860992?s=20

• https://app.any.run/tasks/36c14029-9df8-439c-bba0-45f2643b0c70/

• https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-40444

• https://twitter.com/RonnyTNL/status/1436334640617373699?s=20

• 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: 8