This documentation contains work-in-progress information for future Elastic Stack and Cloud releases. Use the version selector to view supported release docs. It also contains some Elastic Cloud serverless information. Check out our serverless docs for more details.

« Microsoft IIS Connection Strings Decryption Microsoft Windows Defender Tampering »

› › ›

Microsoft IIS Service Account Password Dumped

edit

Microsoft IIS Service Account Password Dumped

edit

Identifies the Internet Information Services (IIS) command-line tool, AppCmd, being used to list passwords. An attacker with IIS web server access via a web shell can decrypt and dump the IIS AppPool service account password using AppCmd.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

winlogbeat-*
logs-endpoint.events.*
logs-windows.*
endgame-*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 33

References:

https://blog.netspi.com/decrypting-iis-passwords-to-break-out-of-the-dmz-part-1/

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Credential Access
Elastic Endgame

Version: 102 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.6.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

edit

Rule query

edit

process where event.type == "start" and (process.name :
"appcmd.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name == "appcmd.exe") and
process.args : "/list" and process.args : "/text*password"

Threat mapping

edit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Credential Access
- ID: TA0006
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0006/
Technique:
- Name: OS Credential Dumping
- ID: T1003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1003/

Rule version history

edit

Version 102 (8.6.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 101 (8.5.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
(process.name : "appcmd.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name ==
"appcmd.exe") and process.args : "/list" and process.args :
"/text*password"

Version 7 (8.4.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
(process.name : "appcmd.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name ==
"appcmd.exe") and process.args : "/list" and process.args :
"/text*password"

Version 5 (8.2.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 4 (7.12.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 3 (7.11.2 release)

Formatting only

Version 2 (7.11.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

event.category:process AND event.type:(start OR process_started) AND
(process.name:appcmd.exe OR process.pe.original_file_name:appcmd.exe
or winlog.event_data.OriginalFileName:appcmd.exe) AND
process.args:(/[lL][iI][sS][tT]/ AND
/\/[tT][eE][xX][tT]\:[pP][aA][sS][sS][wW][oO][rR][dD]/)

« Microsoft IIS Connection Strings Decryption Microsoft Windows Defender Tampering »