Suspicious WMI Image Load from MS Office
editSuspicious WMI Image Load from MS Office
editIdentifies a suspicious image load (wmiutils.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity where child processes are spawned via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This technique can be used to execute code and evade traditional parent/child processes spawned from Microsoft Office products.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- winlogbeat-*
- logs-endpoint.events.library-*
- logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*
- endgame-*
Severity: low
Risk score: 21
Runs every: 5m
Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)
Maximum alerts per execution: 100
References:
Tags:
- Domain: Endpoint
- OS: Windows
- Use Case: Threat Detection
- Tactic: Execution
- Data Source: Elastic Endgame
- Data Source: Elastic Defend
- Data Source: Sysmon
Version: 108
Rule authors:
- Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
Setup
editSetup
If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2,
events will not define event.ingested and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until version 8.2.
Hence for this rule to work effectively, users will need to add a custom ingest pipeline to populate
event.ingested to @timestamp.
For more details on adding a custom ingest pipeline refer - https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/fleet/current/data-streams-pipeline-tutorial.html
Rule query
editany where host.os.type == "windows" and
(event.category : ("library", "driver") or (event.category == "process" and event.action : "Image loaded*")) and
process.name : ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE", "POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and
(?dll.name : "wmiutils.dll" or file.name : "wmiutils.dll")
Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
-
Tactic:
- Name: Execution
- ID: TA0002
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0002/
-
Technique:
- Name: Windows Management Instrumentation
- ID: T1047
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1047/