Potential Application Shimming via Sdbinst
Elastic Stack Serverless Security
The Application Shim was created to allow for backward compatibility of software as the operating system codebase changes over time. This Windows functionality has been abused by attackers to stealthily gain persistence and arbitrary code execution in legitimate Windows processes.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- winlogbeat-*
- logs-endpoint.events.*
- logs-windows.*
Severity: low
Risk score: 21
Runs every: 5m
Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time
)
Maximum alerts per execution: 100
References: None
Tags:
- Elastic
- Host
- Windows
- Threat Detection
- Persistence
Version: 9
Rule authors:
- Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
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.
process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.name : "sdbinst.exe"
Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
Technique:
- Name: Event Triggered Execution
- ID: T1546
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Application Shimming
- ID: T1546.011
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/011/
Tactic:
- Name: Privilege Escalation
- ID: TA0004
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0004/
Technique:
- Name: Event Triggered Execution
- ID: T1546
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Application Shimming
- ID: T1546.011
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1546/011/