---
title: "Windows Java Spawning Shells"
excerpt: "Exploit Public-Facing Application"
categories:
  - Endpoint
last_modified_at: 2021-12-13
toc: true
toc_label: ""
tags:
  - Exploit Public-Facing Application
  - Initial Access
  - Splunk Enterprise
  - Splunk Enterprise Security
  - Splunk Cloud
  - CVE-2021-44228
  - Endpoint
---

### ⚠️ WARNING THIS IS A EXPERIMENTAL DETECTION
We have not been able to test, simulate or build datasets for it, use at your own risk!


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#### Description

The following analytic identifies the process name of java.exe and w3wp.exe spawning a Windows shell. This is potentially indicative of exploitation of the Java application and may be related to current event CVE-2021-44228 (Log4Shell). The shells included in the macro are "cmd.exe", "powershell.exe". Upon triage, review parallel processes and command-line arguments to determine legitimacy.

- **Type**: TTP
- **Product**: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
- **Datamodel**: [Endpoint](https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/CIM/latest/User/Endpoint)
- **Last Updated**: 2021-12-13
- **Author**: Michael Haag, Splunk
- **ID**: 28c81306-5c47-11ec-bfea-acde48001122


#### [ATT&CK](https://attack.mitre.org/)

| ID          | Technique   | Tactic         |
| ----------- | ----------- |--------------- |
| [T1190](https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1190/) | Exploit Public-Facing Application | Initial Access |

#### Search

```

| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name=java.exe OR Processes.parent_process_name=w3wp.exe `windows_shells` by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.parent_process_id 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_java_spawning_shells_filter`
```

#### Associated Analytic Story
* [Log4Shell CVE-2021-44228](/stories/log4shell_cve-2021-44228)


#### How To Implement
To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name, parent process, and command-line executions from your endpoints. Restrict the analytic to publicly facing endpoints to reduce false positives. Add any additional identified web application process name to the query. Add any further Windows process names to the macro (ex. LOLBins) to further expand this query.

#### Required field
* _time
* Processes.dest
* Processes.user
* Processes.parent_process_name
* Processes.parent_process
* Processes.original_file_name
* Processes.process_name
* Processes.process
* Processes.process_id
* Processes.parent_process_path
* Processes.process_path
* Processes.parent_process_id


#### Kill Chain Phase
* Exploitation


#### Known False Positives
Filtering may be required on internal developer build systems or classify assets as web facing and restrict the analytic based on that.


#### RBA

| Risk Score  | Impact      | Confidence   | Message      |
| ----------- | ----------- |--------------|--------------|
| 40.0 | 80 | 50 | An instance of $parent_process_name$ spawning $process_name$ was identified on endpoint $dest$ spawning a Windows shell, potentially indicative of exploitation. |



#### CVE

| ID          | Summary | [CVSS](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln-metrics/cvss) |
| ----------- | ----------- | -------------- |
| [CVE-2021-44228](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-44228) | Apache Log4j2 <=2.14.1 JNDI features used in configuration, log messages, and parameters do not protect against attacker controlled LDAP and other JNDI related endpoints. An attacker who can control log messages or log message parameters can execute arbitrary code loaded from LDAP servers when message lookup substitution is enabled. From log4j 2.15.0, this behavior has been disabled by default. In previous releases (>2.10) this behavior can be mitigated by setting system property "log4j2.formatMsgNoLookups" to “true” or it can be mitigated in prior releases (<2.10) by removing the JndiLookup class from the classpath (example: zip -q -d log4j-core-*.jar org/apache/logging/log4j/core/lookup/JndiLookup.class). | None |



#### Reference

* [https://blog.netlab.360.com/ten-families-of-malicious-samples-are-spreading-using-the-log4j2-vulnerability-now/](https://blog.netlab.360.com/ten-families-of-malicious-samples-are-spreading-using-the-log4j2-vulnerability-now/)
* [https://gist.github.com/olafhartong/916ebc673ba066537740164f7e7e1d72](https://gist.github.com/olafhartong/916ebc673ba066537740164f7e7e1d72)



#### Test Dataset
Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our [`replay.py`](https://github.com/splunk/attack_data#using-replaypy) tool or the [UI](https://github.com/splunk/attack_data#using-ui).
Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a [Splunk Attack Range](https://github.com/splunk/attack_range#replay-dumps-into-attack-range-splunk-server)




[*source*](https://github.com/splunk/security_content/tree/develop/detections/experimental/endpoint/windows_java_spawning_shells.yml) \| *version*: **1**