Critical Hive In Suspicious Location Access Bits Cleared

Status: test
Severity: high
Log source: product windows, service system
Author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
Source: github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects events from the Kernel-General ETW indicating that the access bits of a hive with a system like hive name located in the temp directory have been reset. This occurs when an application tries to access a hive and the hive has not be recognized since the last 7 days (by default). Registry hive dumping utilities such as QuarksPwDump were seen emitting this behavior.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Credential Access	`T1003.002` OS Credential Dumping: Security Account Manager

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Kernel-General	Event ID 16: The access history in hive HiveName was cleared updating KeysUpdated keys and creating DirtyPages modified pages.

Rule body

title: Critical Hive In Suspicious Location Access Bits Cleared
id: 39f919f3-980b-4e6f-a975-8af7e507ef2b
related:
    - id: 839dd1e8-eda8-4834-8145-01beeee33acd
      type: obsolete
status: test
description: |
    Detects events from the Kernel-General ETW indicating that the access bits of a hive with a system like hive name located in the temp directory have been reset.
    This occurs when an application tries to access a hive and the hive has not be recognized since the last 7 days (by default).
    Registry hive dumping utilities such as QuarksPwDump were seen emitting this behavior.
references:
    - https://github.com/nasbench/Misc-Research/blob/b20da2336de0f342d31ef4794959d28c8d3ba5ba/ETW/Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General.md
author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
date: 2017-05-15
modified: 2024-01-18
tags:
    - attack.credential-access
    - attack.t1003.002
logsource:
    product: windows
    service: system
detection:
    selection:
        EventID: 16
        Provider_Name: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General
        HiveName|contains:
            - '\Temp\SAM'
            - '\Temp\SECURITY'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Unknown
level: high

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

selection

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    EventID: 16
    Provider_Name: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General
    HiveName|contains:
        - '\Temp\SAM'
        - '\Temp\SECURITY'

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`HiveName`	match	`\Temp\SAM` `\Temp\SECURITY`	`field:"HiveName" kind:match`
`Provider_Name`	eq	`Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General`	`field:"Provider_Name" kind:eq value:"Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General"`