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Description

This search is to detect potential malicious office document executing lolbin child process to download payload or other malware. Since most of the attacker abused the capability of office document to execute living on land application to blend it to the normal noise in the infected machine to cover its track.

  • Type: TTP
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2023-02-15
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 6fed27d2-9ec7-11eb-8fe4-aa665a019aa3

Annotations

ATT&CK

ATT&CK

ID Technique Tactic
T1566 Phishing Initial Access
T1566.001 Spearphishing Attachment Initial Access
Kill Chain Phase
  • Delivery
NIST
  • DE.CM
CIS20
  • CIS 10
CVE 


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| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name IN ("winword.exe","excel.exe","powerpnt.exe","mspub.exe","visio.exe","onenote.exe","onenotem.exe","onenoteviewer.exe","onenoteim.exe","msaccess.exe") Processes.process IN ("*http:*","*https:*") NOT (Processes.original_file_name IN("firefox.exe", "chrome.exe","iexplore.exe","msedge.exe"))  by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.parent_process_id Processes.original_file_name 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `office_document_spawned_child_process_to_download_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: office_document_spawned_child_process_to_download_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
  • Processes.dest
  • Processes.user
  • Processes.parent_process_name
  • Processes.parent_process
  • Processes.original_file_name
  • Processes.process_name
  • Processes.process
  • Processes.process_id
  • Processes.parent_process_path
  • Processes.process_path
  • Processes.parent_process_id

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 office application and browser may be used.

Known False Positives

Default browser not in the filter list.

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
35.0 70 50 Office document spawning suspicious child process 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: 5