Detection rules › Splunk

Suspicious PowerShell Clipboard Activity (Sysmon)

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

Adversaries can use a variety of commands to obfuscate their activity. This use case detects PowerShell commands involving combinations of the SendKeys cmdlet, clipboard access, and native text editors

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

References

Event coverage

ProviderEventTitle
SysmonEvent ID 1Process creation

Rule body yaml

id: '15884.23728'
title: Suspicious PowerShell Clipboard Activity
description: 'Adversaries can use a variety of commands to obfuscate their activity.
  This use case detects PowerShell commands involving combinations of the SendKeys
  cmdlet, clipboard access, and native text editors. -- Software Association: BbyStealer
  -- Atomics T1059.001 Test #5'
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "<EventID>1<")
  ("[Windows.Forms.Clipboard]" TERM(sendkeys)) (TERM(notepad) OR TERM(wordpad)) |
  table _time, host, user, process, process_* | bin span=1s | stats values(*) as *
  by _time, host '
techniques:
- execution:command and scripting interpreter:powershell
- collection:clipboard data
- execution:command and scripting interpreter
technique_id:
- T1059.001
- T1115
data_category:
- Windows Sysmon
- Process command-line parameters
references:
- https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/master/atomics/T1059.001/T1059.001.md#atomic-test-5---mimikatz---cradlecraft-pssendkeys
- https://cyble.com/blog/bbystealer-malware-resurfaces-sets-sights-on-vpn-users/

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_sysmon` (TERM(EventCode=1) OR "<EventID>1<") ("[Windows.Forms.Clipboard]" TERM(sendkeys)) (TERM(notepad) OR TERM(wordpad))

Stage 2: table

| table _time, host, user, process, process_*

Stage 3: bucket

| bin span=1s

Stage 4: stats

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

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

FieldKindValues
EventCodeeq
  • 1 corpus 237 (splunk 224, kusto 13)

Search terms

Bare-string tokens in the SPL search body. Splunk matches each token against _raw (the untyped raw event text) anywhere it appears, not against a specific field. These don't surface in the Indicators table because they aren't predicates on a known field.

StageTerm
1TERM
1"<EventID>1<"
1"[Windows.Forms.Clipboard]"
1TERM
1sendkeys
1TERM
1notepad
1TERM
1wordpad