Detection rules › Splunk
Certutil Execution (Sysmon)
certutil is a command-line utility that can be used to obtain certificate authority information and configure Certificate Services. This use case looks for process executions of certutil
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Stealth | |
| Command & Control |
References
Telemetry coverage
| Provider | Record / event type |
|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1: Process creation |
Rule body
id: '6167.11626'
title: Certutil Execution
description: 'certutil is a command-line utility that can be used to obtain certificate
authority information and configure Certificate Services. This use case looks for
process executions of certutil. -- Threat Actor Association: DarkSide, BlackMatter,
REvil - Software Association: HermeticWiper/Trojan.Killdisk -- Living Off the Land
Binary and Scripts (LOLBAS) (LOLBIN) -- Atomics 1003.002 Test #5 Atomics 1140 Test
#1'
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "<EventID>1<")
(TERM(certutil) OR "certutil.exe") | table _time, host, user, signature_id, process,
process_*, parent_* | bin span=1s | stats values(*) as * by _time, host | where
match(process_name, "(?i)certutil") '
techniques:
- command-and-control:data encoding
- command-and-control:ingress tool transfer
- defense-evasion:deobfuscate/decode files or information
- defense-evasion:obfuscated files or information
technique_id:
- T1132
- T1105
- T1140
- T1027
data_category:
- Windows Sysmon
references:
- https://lolbas-project.github.io/lolbas/Binaries/Certutil/
- https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2018/09/apt10-targeting-japanese-corporations-using-updated-ttps.html
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "<EventID>1<") (TERM(certutil) OR "certutil.exe")
Stage 2: table
| table _time, host, user, signature_id, process, process_*, parent_*
Stage 3: bucket
| bin span=1s
Stage 4: stats
| stats values(*) as * by _time, host
Stage 5: where
| where match(process_name, "(?i)certutil")
Indicators
These rows show field, operator, and value matches.
| Field | Kind | Values | Search |
|---|---|---|---|
EventCode | eq |
| field:"EventID" kind:eq value:"1" |
process_name | regex_match |
| field:"process_name" kind:regex_match |
Search terms
These SPL tokens match against raw event text.
| Stage | Term |
|---|---|
| 1 | "<EventID>1<" |
| 1 | certutil |
| 1 | "certutil.exe" |