UAC Bypass Attempt via Elevated COM Internet Explorer Add-On Installer

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UAC Bypass Attempt via Elevated COM Internet Explorer Add-On Installer

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Identifies User Account Control (UAC) bypass attempts by abusing an elevated COM Interface to launch a malicious program. Attackers may attempt to bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

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
  • Privilege Escalation

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

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 in ("start", "process_started") and
process.executable : "C:\\*\\AppData\\*\\Temp\\IDC*.tmp\\*.exe" and
process.parent.name : "ieinstal.exe" and process.parent.args :
"-Embedding" /* uncomment once in winlogbeat */ /* and not
(process.code_signature.subject_name == "Microsoft Corporation" and
process.code_signature.trusted == true) */

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 (7.15.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    process where event.type in ("start", "process_started", "info") and
    wildcard(process.executable,
    "C:\\*\\AppData\\*\\Temp\\IDC*.tmp\\*.exe") and process.parent.name
    == "ieinstal.exe" and process.parent.args == "-Embedding" /*
    uncomment once in winlogbeat */ /* and not
    (process.code_signature.subject_name == "Microsoft Corporation" and
    process.code_signature.trusted == true) */
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only