Persistence via Update Orchestrator Service Hijack

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Persistence via Update Orchestrator Service Hijack

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Identifies potential hijacking of the Microsoft Update Orchestrator Service to establish persistence with an integrity level of SYSTEM.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

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: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Persistence

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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## Config

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 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule query

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process where event.type == "start" and process.parent.executable :
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\svchost.exe" and process.parent.args :
"UsoSvc" and not process.executable : (
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\UsoClient.exe",
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\MusNotification.exe",
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\MusNotificationUx.exe",
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\MusNotifyIcon.exe",
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\WerFault.exe",
"C:\\Windows\\System32\\WerMgr.exe" )

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 5 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.12.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.category:process and event.type:(start or process_started) and
    process.parent.name:svchost.exe and process.parent.args:(UsoSvc or
    usosvc) and not process.name:(UsoClient.exe or usoclient.exe or
    MusNotification.exe or musnotification.exe or MusNotificationUx.exe or
    musnotificationux.exe)
Version 3 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.0 release)
  • Formatting only