IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

« Suspicious Cmd Execution via WMI Suspicious Emond Child Process »

› › ›

Suspicious DLL Loaded for Persistence or Privilege Escalation

edit

Suspicious DLL Loaded for Persistence or Privilege Escalation

edit

Identifies the loading of a non Microsoft signed DLL that is missing on a default Windows install (phantom DLL) or one that can be loaded from a different location by a native Windows process. This may be abused to persist or elevate privileges via privileged file write vulnerabilities.

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
Privilege Escalation

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

edit

## 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

edit

library where dll.name : ( "wlbsctrl.dll", "wbemcomn.dll",
"WptsExtensions.dll", "Tsmsisrv.dll", "TSVIPSrv.dll",
"Msfte.dll", "wow64log.dll", "WindowsCoreDeviceInfo.dll",
"Ualapi.dll", "wlanhlp.dll", "phoneinfo.dll", "EdgeGdi.dll",
"cdpsgshims.dll", "windowsperformancerecordercontrol.dll",
"diagtrack_win.dll" ) and not (dll.code_signature.subject_name :
("Microsoft Windows", "Microsoft Corporation") and
dll.code_signature.status : "trusted")

Threat mapping

edit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Privilege Escalation
- ID: TA0004
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0004/
Technique:
- Name: Hijack Execution Flow
- ID: T1574
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1574/
Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
Technique:
- Name: Hijack Execution Flow
- ID: T1574
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1574/

Rule version history

edit

Version 3 (8.2.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 2 (7.14.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

library where dll.name : ( "wlbsctrl.dll", "wbemcomn.dll",
"WptsExtensions.dll", "Tsmsisrv.dll", "TSVIPSrv.dll",
"Msfte.dll", "wow64log.dll", "WindowsCoreDeviceInfo.dll",
"Ualapi.dll", "wlanhlp.dll", "phoneinfo.dll", "EdgeGdi.dll",
"cdpsgshims.dll", "windowsperformancerecordercontrol.dll",
"diagtrack_win.dll" ) and not (dll.code_signature.subject_name :
"Microsoft Windows" and dll.code_signature.status : "trusted")

« Suspicious Cmd Execution via WMI Suspicious Emond Child Process »