Potential Adplus.EXE Abuse

Status: test
Severity: high
Log source: category process_creation, product windows
Author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
Source: github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects execution of "AdPlus.exe", a binary that is part of the Windows SDK that can be used as a LOLBIN in order to dump process memory and execute arbitrary commands.

Known false positives

Legitimate usage of Adplus for debugging purposes

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Credential Access	`T1003.001` OS Credential Dumping: LSASS Memory

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 1: Process creation

Rule body

title: Potential Adplus.EXE Abuse
id: 2f869d59-7f6a-4931-992c-cce556ff2d53
status: test
description: Detects execution of "AdPlus.exe", a binary that is part of the Windows SDK that can be used as a LOLBIN in order to dump process memory and execute arbitrary commands.
references:
    - https://lolbas-project.github.io/lolbas/OtherMSBinaries/Adplus/
    - https://twitter.com/nas_bench/status/1534916659676422152
    - https://twitter.com/nas_bench/status/1534915321856917506
author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
date: 2022-06-09
modified: 2023-06-23
tags:
    - attack.execution
    - attack.credential-access
    - attack.t1003.001
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection_img:
        - Image|endswith: '\adplus.exe'
        - OriginalFileName: 'Adplus.exe'
    selection_cli:
        CommandLine|contains:
            # Dump process memory
            - ' -hang '
            - ' -pn '
            - ' -pmn '
            - ' -p '
            - ' -po '
            # Using a config file
            - ' -c '
            # Execute commands inline
            - ' -sc '
    condition: all of selection_*
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate usage of Adplus for debugging purposes
level: high

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

all of selection_*

Stage 1: `selection_img`

selection_img:
    - Image|endswith: '\adplus.exe'
    - OriginalFileName: 'Adplus.exe'

Stage 2: `selection_cli`

selection_cli:
    CommandLine|contains:
        - ' -hang '
        - ' -pn '
        - ' -pmn '
        - ' -p '
        - ' -po '
        - ' -c '
        - ' -sc '

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`CommandLine`	match	`-c` corpus 13 (sigma 13) `-hang` `-p` corpus 11 (sigma 7, splunk 4) `-pmn` `-pn` `-po` `-sc` corpus 2 (sigma 2)	`field:"CommandLine" kind:match`
`Image`	ends_with	`\adplus.exe`	`field:"Image" kind:ends_with value:"\adplus.exe"`
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`Adplus.exe`	`field:"OriginalFileName" kind:eq value:"Adplus.exe"`