Detection rules › Sigma

WMI Persistence - Script Event Consumer

Status
test
Severity
medium
Log source
category process_creation, product windows
Author
Thomas Patzke
Source
github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects the execution of a script event consumer. When scrcons.exe launches, it does so in response to the creation of an ActiveScriptEventConsumer instance and will execute registered JScript or VBScript code as a result. Script event consumers are a built-in Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) class that automatically executes a predefined script (in VBScript or JScript) whenever a specific system event occurs. Adversaries often abuse script event consumers to maintain persistence on a compromised host by executing a malicious script whenever a specific event occurs.

Known false positives

  • Legitimate event consumers
  • Dell computers on some versions register an event consumer that is known to cause false positives when brightness is changed by the corresponding keyboard button

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Telemetry coverage

Rule body

title: WMI Persistence - Script Event Consumer
id: ec1d5e28-8f3b-4188-a6f8-6e8df81dc28e
status: test
description: |
    Detects the execution of a script event consumer. When scrcons.exe launches, it does so in response to the creation of an ActiveScriptEventConsumer instance
    and will execute registered JScript or VBScript code as a result.
    Script event consumers are a built-in Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) class that
    automatically executes a predefined script (in VBScript or JScript) whenever a specific system event occurs.
    Adversaries often abuse script event consumers to maintain persistence on a compromised host
    by executing a malicious script whenever a specific event occurs.
references:
    - https://redcanary.com/blog/threat-detection/child-processes/
    - https://www.eideon.com/2018-03-02-THL03-WMIBackdoors/
author: Thomas Patzke
date: 2018-03-07
modified: 2022-10-11
tags:
    - attack.persistence
    - attack.privilege-escalation
    - attack.t1546.003
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\scrcons.exe
        ParentImage: C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate event consumers
    - Dell computers on some versions register an event consumer that is known to cause false positives when brightness is changed by the corresponding keyboard button
level: medium

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: condition

selection

Stage 1: selection

selection:
    Image: C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\scrcons.exe
    ParentImage: C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

FieldKindValuesSearch
Imageeq
  • C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\scrcons.exe corpus 2 (sigma 2)
field:"Image" kind:eq value:"C:\WINDOWS\system32\wbem\scrcons.exe"
ParentImageeq
  • C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe corpus 5 (sigma 3, elastic 2)
field:"ParentImage" kind:eq value:"C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe"