Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments

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Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments

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Identifies unusual instances of Control Panel with suspicious keywords or paths in the process command line value. Adversaries may abuse control.exe to proxy execution of malicious code.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • logs-endpoint.events.process-*
  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-windows.forwarded*
  • logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*
  • endgame-*
  • logs-system.security*
  • logs-m365_defender.event-*
  • logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

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: Defense Evasion
  • Tactic: Execution
  • Data Source: Elastic Endgame
  • Data Source: Elastic Defend
  • Data Source: System
  • Data Source: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
  • Data Source: Sysmon
  • Data Source: SentinelOne

Version: 312

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Setup

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Setup

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

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process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
 process.executable : ("?:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\control.exe", "?:\\Windows\\System32\\control.exe") and
 process.command_line :
          ("*.jpg*",
           "*.png*",
           "*.gif*",
           "*.bmp*",
           "*.jpeg*",
           "*.TIFF*",
           "*.inf*",
           "*.cpl:*/*",
           "*../../..*",
           "*/AppData/Local/*",
           "*:\\Users\\Public\\*",
           "*\\AppData\\Local\\*")

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM