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Potential Port Monitor or Print Processor Registration Abuse

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Potential Port Monitor or Print Processor Registration Abuse

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Identifies port monitor and print processor registry modifications. Adversaries may abuse port monitor and print processors to run malicious DLLs during system boot that will be executed as SYSTEM for privilege escalation and/or persistence, if permissions allow writing a fully-qualified pathname for that DLL.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

logs-endpoint.events.*

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

References:

https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/05/21/no-game-over-winnti-group/

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Privilege Escalation

Version: 100 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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registry where event.type in ("creation", "change") and
registry.path :
("HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Control\\Print\\Monitors\\*", "HKLM\
\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Control\\Print\\Environments\\Windows*\\Print
Processors\\*") and registry.data.strings : "*.dll" and /* exclude
SYSTEM SID - look for changes by non-SYSTEM user */ not user.id :
"S-1-5-18"

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Privilege Escalation
- ID: TA0004
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0004/
Technique:
- Name: Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
- ID: T1547
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1547/
Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
Technique:
- Name: Boot or Logon Autostart Execution
- ID: T1547
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1547/

Rule version history

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Version 100 (8.5.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 3 (8.4.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 2 (8.1.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

registry where event.type in ("creation", "change") and
registry.path :
("HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Control\\Print\\Monitors\\*", "HLLM\
\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Control\\Print\\Environments\\Windows*\\Print
Processors\\*") and registry.data.strings : "*.dll" and /* exclude
SYSTEM SID - look for changes by non-SYSTEM user */ not user.id :
"S-1-5-18"

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