Enable Local Manifest Installation With Winget

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

Detects changes to the AppInstaller (winget) policy. Specifically the activation of the local manifest installation, which allows a user to install new packages via custom manifests.

Known false positives

Administrators or developers might enable this for testing purposes or to install custom private packages

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Persistence	No specific technique
Stealth	No specific technique

Telemetry coverage

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

Rule body

title: Enable Local Manifest Installation With Winget
id: fa277e82-9b78-42dd-b05c-05555c7b6015
status: test
description: Detects changes to the AppInstaller (winget) policy. Specifically the activation of the local manifest installation, which allows a user to install new packages via custom manifests.
references:
    - https://github.com/nasbench/Misc-Research/tree/b9596e8109dcdb16ec353f316678927e507a5b8d/LOLBINs/Winget
author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
date: 2023-04-17
modified: 2023-08-17
tags:
    - attack.persistence
    - attack.stealth
logsource:
    product: windows
    category: registry_set
detection:
    selection:
        TargetObject|endswith: '\AppInstaller\EnableLocalManifestFiles'
        Details: 'DWORD (0x00000001)'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Administrators or developers might enable this for testing purposes or to install custom private packages
level: medium

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

selection

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    TargetObject|endswith: '\AppInstaller\EnableLocalManifestFiles'
    Details: 'DWORD (0x00000001)'

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`Details`	eq	`DWORD (0x00000001)` corpus 40 (sigma 36, chronicle 4)	`field:"Details" kind:eq value:"DWORD (0x00000001)"`
`TargetObject`	ends_with	`\AppInstaller\EnableLocalManifestFiles`	`field:"TargetObject" kind:ends_with value:"\AppInstaller\EnableLocalManifestFiles"`