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Description

The following analytic detects the loading of drivers from suspicious paths, which is a technique often used by malicious software such as coin miners (e.g., xmrig). It leverages Sysmon EventCode 6 to identify drivers loaded from non-standard directories. This activity is significant because legitimate drivers typically reside in specific system directories, and deviations may indicate malicious activity. If confirmed malicious, this could allow an attacker to execute code at the kernel level, potentially leading to privilege escalation, persistence, or further system compromise.

  • Type: TTP

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

  • Last Updated: 2024-05-16
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: f880acd4-a8f1-11eb-a53b-acde48001122

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1543.003 Windows Service Persistence, Privilege Escalation
T1543 Create or Modify System Process Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Kill Chain Phase
  • Installation
  • Exploitation
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


1
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6



`sysmon` EventCode=6 ImageLoaded = "*.sys" NOT (ImageLoaded IN("*\\WINDOWS\\inf","*\\WINDOWS\\System32\\drivers\\*", "*\\WINDOWS\\System32\\DriverStore\\FileRepository\\*")) 
|  stats  min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime count by dest ImageLoaded Hashes IMPHASH Signature Signed
| rename ImageLoaded as file_name 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `suspicious_driver_loaded_path_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: suspicious_driver_loaded_path_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
  • dest
  • ImageLoaded
  • Hashes
  • IMPHASH
  • Signature
  • Signed

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the driver loaded and Signature from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA.

Known False Positives

Limited false positives will be present. Some applications do load drivers

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
63.0 70 90 Suspicious driver $file_name$ on $dest$

: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: 2