Registry Persistence via AppCert DLL

edit

Detects attempts to maintain persistence by creating registry keys using AppCert DLLs. AppCert DLLs are loaded by every process using the common API functions to create processes.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*
  • logs-windows.*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Persistence

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

edit
## Config

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule query

edit
registry where /* uncomment once stable length(bytes_written_string) >
0 and */ registry.path :
"HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Control\\Session Manager\\AppCertDLLs\\*"

Threat mapping

edit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

edit
Version 5 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (8.1.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    registry where /* uncomment once stable length(bytes_written_string) >
    0 and */ registry.path :
    "HKLM\\SYSTEM\\ControlSet*\\Control\\Session Manager\\AppCertDLLs\\*"
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only