High Process Termination Frequency
Description
This analytics are designed to indentify a high frequency of process termination on a machine which is a common behavior of ransomware malware before encrypting files. This technique is designed to avoid an exception error while accessing (docs, images, database and etc..) in the infected machine for encryption.
- Type: Anomaly
- Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
- Datamodel: Endpoint
- Last Updated: 2021-03-16
- Author: Teoderick Contreras
- ID: 17cd75b2-8666-11eb-9ab4-acde48001122
ATT&CK
| ID | Technique | Tactic |
|---|---|---|
| T1486 | Data Encrypted for Impact | Impact |
Search
`sysmon` EventCode=5
|bin _time span=3s
|stats values(Image) as proc_terminated min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime count by Computer EventCode ProcessID
| where count >= 15
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `high_process_termination_frequency_filter`
Associated Analytic Story
How To Implement
To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the Image (process full path of terminated process) from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA.
Required field
- EventCode
- Image
- Computer
- _time
- ProcessID
Kill Chain Phase
- Exploitation
Known False Positives
admin or user tool that can terminate multiple process.
RBA
| Risk Score | Impact | Confidence | Message |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72.0 | 90 | 80 | High frequency process termination (more than 15 processes within 3s) detected on host $Computer$ |
Reference
- https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/10/fin11-email-campaigns-precursor-for-ransomware-data-theft.html
- https://blog.virustotal.com/2020/11/keep-your-friends-close-keep-ransomware.html
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: 1