Elastic Defend high stable eql

Control Panel Process with Unusual Arguments

Identifies instances of the Control Panel application running with suspicious keywords or paths in the process command line value. Adversaries may abuse Control.exe to proxy execution of malicious code.

View Source

Detection Logic

process where event.action == "start" and
(

 (process.executable : ("?:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\control.exe", "?:\\Windows\\System32\\control.exe") and
  process.command_line :
          ("*.jpg*",
           "*.png*",
           "*.gif*",
           "*.bmp*",
           "*.jpeg*",
           "*.TIFF*",
           "*.inf*",
           "*.dat*",
           "*.cpl:../*",
           "*..\\..\\*",
           "*/AppData/Local/*",
           "*:\\Users\\Public\\*",
           "*\\AppData\\Local\\*") and 
           
  /* excluding FPs where /name arg is used to specify a control by name */
  not (process.args : "/name" and process.args_count >= 2) and
  /* excluding system IL to minimize risk of killing system critical execution */
  not process.Ext.token.integrity_level_name == "system") or

  (process.name : "rundll32.exe" and process.command_line : "*shell32*#*44*" and
   not (process.parent.name : "rundll32.exe" and process.parent.command_line : "*Shell32*Control_RunDLL*")) or

  (process.name : "rundll32.exe" and process.command_line : "*shell32*#*44*" and
   not process.command_line : "*.cpl*" and process.args_count >= 3) or

  (process.name : "rundll32.exe" and process.command_line : "*shell32*#*44*" and process.args_count >= 3 and
   (process.command_line : ("*/AppData/Local/*", "*:\\Users\\Public\\*", "*\\AppData\\Local\\*", "*:\\ProgramData\\*") or
    process.working_directory : ("?:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Local\\*", "?:\\Users\\Public\\*")))
) and
not (process.name : "rundll32.exe" and process.args : ("OpenAs_RunDLL", "ShellExec_RunDLL"))

Field Validations

Loading…

Comments (0)

Loading comments...