Create Remote Thread In Shell Application

Try in Splunk Security Cloud

Description

This search is to detect suspicious process injection in command shell. This technique was seen in IcedID where it execute cmd.exe process to inject its shellcode as part of its execution as banking trojan. It is really uncommon to have a create remote thread execution in the following application.

• Type: TTP

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

• Last Updated: 2021-08-04
• Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
• ID: 10399c1e-f51e-11eb-b920-acde48001122

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1055	Process Injection	Defense Evasion, Privilege Escalation

Kill Chain Phase

• Exploitation

NIST

• DE.CM

CIS20

• CIS 10

CVE

Search

`sysmon` EventCode=8 TargetImage IN ("*\\cmd.exe", "*\\powershell*") 
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by  TargetImage TargetProcessId SourceProcessId  EventCode StartAddress SourceImage dest 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `create_remote_thread_in_shell_application_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

• security_content_ctime
• sysmon

create_remote_thread_in_shell_application_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
• SourceImage
• TargetImage
• TargetProcessId
• SourceProcessId
• StartAddress
• EventCode
• dest

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.

Known False Positives

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

• IcedID
• Qakbot
• Warzone RAT

RBA

Risk Score	Impact	Confidence	Message
70.0	70	100	process $SourceImage$ create a remote thread to shell app process $TargetImage$ in host $dest$

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

• https://thedfirreport.com/2021/07/19/icedid-and-cobalt-strike-vs-antivirus/

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

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