Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments
Identifies unusual instances of Control Panel with suspicious keywords or paths in the process command line value. Adversaries may abuse control.exe to proxy the execution of malicious code.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- logs-endpoint.events.*
- winlogbeat-*
- logs-windows.*
Severity: high
Risk score: 73
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:
Tags:
- Elastic
- Host
- Windows
- Threat Detection
- Defense Evasion
Version: 3
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.executable : ("?:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\control.exe", "?:\\Windows\\System32\\control.exe") and
process.command_line :
("*.jpg*",
"*.png*",
"*.gif*",
"*.bmp*",
"*.jpeg*",
"*.TIFF*",
"*.inf*",
"*.dat*",
"*.cpl:*/*",
"*../../..*",
"*/AppData/Local/*",
"*:\\Users\\Public\\*",
"*\\AppData\\Local\\*")
Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
Technique:
- Name: Signed Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Control Panel
- ID: T1218.002
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/002/