Potential Persistence Via Outlook LoadMacroProviderOnBoot Setting

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

Detects the modification of Outlook setting "LoadMacroProviderOnBoot" which if enabled allows the automatic loading of any configured VBA project/module

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Persistence	`T1137` Office Application Startup `T1546` Event Triggered Execution
Privilege Escalation	`T1546` Event Triggered Execution
Command & Control	`T1008` Fallback Channels

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 13: RegistryEvent (Value Set)

Rule body

title: Potential Persistence Via Outlook LoadMacroProviderOnBoot Setting
id: 396ae3eb-4174-4b9b-880e-dc0364d78a19
status: test
description: Detects the modification of Outlook setting "LoadMacroProviderOnBoot" which if enabled allows the automatic loading of any configured VBA project/module
references:
    - https://speakerdeck.com/heirhabarov/hunting-for-persistence-via-microsoft-exchange-server-or-outlook?slide=53
    - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/outlook-backdoor-using-vba-samir-b-/
author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
date: 2021-04-05
modified: 2023-08-17
tags:
    - attack.privilege-escalation
    - attack.persistence
    - attack.command-and-control
    - attack.t1137
    - attack.t1008
    - attack.t1546
logsource:
    category: registry_set
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        TargetObject|endswith: '\Outlook\LoadMacroProviderOnBoot'
        Details|contains: '0x00000001'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Unknown
level: high

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

selection

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    TargetObject|endswith: '\Outlook\LoadMacroProviderOnBoot'
    Details|contains: '0x00000001'

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`Details`	match	`0x00000001` corpus 4 (sigma 4)	`field:"Details" kind:match value:"0x00000001"`
`TargetObject`	ends_with	`\Outlook\LoadMacroProviderOnBoot`	`field:"TargetObject" kind:ends_with value:"\Outlook\LoadMacroProviderOnBoot"`