Detection rules › Splunk
Suspicious PowerShell Clipboard Activity (Windows Event Log)
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
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Execution | T1059.001 Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell |
| Collection | T1115 Clipboard Data |
References
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
id: '15884.23727'
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_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR
"<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) ("[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 event logs
- 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_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR "<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) ("[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.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
EventCode | eq |
|
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.
| Stage | Term |
|---|---|
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | "<EventID>4688<" |
| 1 | "[Windows.Forms.Clipboard]" |
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | sendkeys |
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | notepad |
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | wordpad |