Software Discovery: Security Software Discovery T1518.001
Tactic: Discovery
Adversaries may attempt to get a listing of security software, configurations, defensive tools, and sensors that are installed on a system or in a cloud environment. This may include things such as cloud monitoring agents and anti-virus. Adversaries may use the information from Security Software Discovery during automated discovery to shape follow-on behaviors, including whether or not the adversary fully infects the target and/or attempts specific actions.
Events covered
6 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
| ESF | exec | Process Execution (Notify) |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4103 | Payload Context: ContextInfo User Data: UserData. |
| PowerShell | Event ID 4104 | Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal). |
| Sysmon-for-Linux | Event ID 1 | Process Create |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 19 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. The catalog normalizes field names across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (17 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (251 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that use it.
Exclusions (34 distinct)
Field/operator/value combinations excluded by rules under this technique (top-level not() clauses), sorted by how many rules exclude each. These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths. Click a value to expand the rules under this technique that exclude it.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 8 rules
- Local Firewall Rules Enumeration Via NetFirewallRule Cmdlet
- Security Software Discovery - Linux
- Security Software Discovery - MacOs
- Security Software Discovery Via Powershell Script
- Security Tools Keyword Lookup Via Findstr.EXE
- Sysmon Discovery Via Default Driver Altitude Using Findstr.EXE
- System Integrity Protection (SIP) Disabled
- System Integrity Protection (SIP) Enumeration
Elastic 4 rules
- Deprecated - PowerShell Script with Discovery Capabilities
- Process Discovery via Built-In Applications
- Security Software Discovery using WMIC
- Security Software Discovery via Grep
Splunk 6 rules
- Security Software Discovery via Findstr.exe (PowerShell)
- Security Software Discovery via Findstr.exe (Sysmon)
- Security Software Discovery via Findstr.exe (Windows Event Log)
- Security Software Discovery via WMI (PowerShell)
- Security Software Discovery via WMI (Sysmon)
- Security Software Discovery via WMI (Windows Event Log)