Detection rules › Splunk

Potential PowerShell Post-Exploitation Activity (Sysmon)

Group by
_time, host
Source
github.com/anvilogic-forge/armory

Threat actors may perform post-exploitation activities using PowerShell scripts such as ADRecon. When running ADRecon, PowerShell launches child processes to compile and execute payloads and creates several .cmdline files in AppData\Local\Temp directories. This use case detects PowerShell-invoked compilations involving csc.exe and cvtres.exe referencing multiple .cmdline files from temp directories within a 5 minute time period. This may that a malicious script like ADRecon has been executed, regardless of the script title name or cmdlets invoked

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

References

Telemetry coverage

ProviderRecord / event type
SysmonEvent ID 1: Process creation

Rule body

id: '27535.50074'
title: Potential PowerShell Post-Exploitation Activity
description: 'Threat actors may perform post-exploitation activities using PowerShell
  scripts such as ADRecon. When running ADRecon, PowerShell launches child processes
  to compile and execute payloads and creates several .cmdline files in AppData\Local\Temp
  directories. This use case detects PowerShell-invoked compilations involving csc.exe
  and cvtres.exe referencing multiple .cmdline files from temp directories within
  a 5 minute time period. This may that a malicious script like ADRecon has been executed,
  regardless of the script title name or cmdlets invoked. Atomics T1087.002 Test #4'
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "<EventID>1<")
  ("powershell.exe" OR "pwsh.exe") ("csc.exe" OR "cvtres.exe") ".cmdline" | regex
  parent_process_name="(?i)(powershell|pwsh)\.exe"| regex process_name="(?i)(csc|cvtres)\.exe"|
  regex process="(?i)\x5cAppData\x5cLocal\x5cTemp.+\.cmdline" | table _time, host,
  user process, parent_process_name, event_count | bin span=300s | stats values(*)
  as * by _time, host | eventstats dc(process) as dc_process by host, _time| where
  dc_process > 3 '
techniques:
- execution:command and scripting interpreter:powershell
- discovery:account discovery
- discovery:system information discovery
technique_id:
- T1059.001
- T1087
- T1082
data_category:
- Windows Sysmon
references:
- https://github.com/sense-of-security/ADRecon/tree/master
- https://www.dnif.it/en/blog/strategies-to-detect-post-exploitation-active-directory-reconnaissance
- https://symantec-enterprise-blogs.security.com/blogs/threat-intelligence/ransomware-hive-conti-avoslocker

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "<EventID>1<") ("powershell.exe" OR "pwsh.exe") ("csc.exe" OR "cvtres.exe") ".cmdline"

Stage 2: regex

| regex parent_process_name="(?i)(powershell|pwsh)\.exe"

Stage 3: regex

| regex process_name="(?i)(csc|cvtres)\.exe"

Stage 4: regex

| regex process="(?i)\x5cAppData\x5cLocal\x5cTemp.+\.cmdline"

Stage 5: table

| table _time, host, user process, parent_process_name, event_count

Stage 6: bucket

| bin span=300s

Stage 7: stats

| stats values(*) as * by _time, host

Stage 8: eventstats

| eventstats dc(process) as dc_process by host, _time

Stage 9: where

| where dc_process > 3

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

FieldKindValuesSearch
EventCodeeq
  • 1 corpus 241 (splunk 225, kusto 15, elastic 1)
field:"EventID" kind:eq value:"1"
dc_processgt
  • 3 corpus 4 (splunk 4)
field:"dc_process" kind:gt value:"3"
parent_process_nameregex_match
  • "(?i)(powershell|pwsh).exe" corpus 2 (splunk 2)
field:"parent_process_name" kind:regex_match
processregex_match
  • "(?i)\x5cAppData\x5cLocal\x5cTemp.+.cmdline" corpus 2 (splunk 2)
field:"CommandLine" kind:regex_match
process_nameregex_match
  • "(?i)(csc|cvtres).exe" corpus 2 (splunk 2)
field:"process_name" kind:regex_match

Search terms

These SPL tokens match against raw event text.

StageTerm
1"<EventID>1<"
1"powershell.exe"
1"pwsh.exe"
1"csc.exe"
1"cvtres.exe"
1".cmdline"