Try in Splunk Security Cloud

Description

This detection was designed to identify suspicious spawned processes of known MS office applications due to macro or malicious code. this technique can be seen in so many malware like trickbot that used MS office as its weapon or attack vector to initially infect the machines.

  • Type: TTP
  • Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
  • Datamodel: Endpoint
  • Last Updated: 2023-02-15
  • Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
  • ID: 958751e4-9c5f-11eb-b103-acde48001122

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 


1
2
3
4
5
6



| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where (Processes.parent_process_name = "winword.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "excel.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "powerpnt.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name= "onenote.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "onenotem.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "onenoteviewer.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "onenoteim.exe" OR Processes.parent_process_name = "msaccess.exe") AND `process_rundll32` by Processes.parent_process Processes.process_name Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.process Processes.user Processes.dest 
| `drop_dm_object_name("Processes")` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
|`security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `office_application_spawn_rundll32_process_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

:information_source: office_application_spawn_rundll32_process_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.

  • 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 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. In addition, confirm the latest CIM App 4.20 or higher is installed and the latest TA for the endpoint product.

Known False Positives

unknown

Associated Analytic Story

RBA

Risk Score Impact Confidence Message
63.0 70 90 Office application spawning rundll32.exe 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: 4