splunk-security_content/docs/_posts/2021-09-08-office_spawning_control.md

title, excerpt, categories, last_modified_at, toc, toc_label, tags

title	excerpt	categories	last_modified_at	toc	toc_label	tags
Office Spawning Control	Phishing , Spearphishing Attachment	Endpoint	2021-09-08	true		Phishing Spearphishing Attachment Initial Access Initial Access Splunk Enterprise Splunk Enterprise Security Splunk Cloud CVE-2021-40444 Endpoint

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Description

The following detection identifies control.exe spawning from an office product. This detection identifies any Windows Office Product spawning control.exe. In malicious instances, the command-line of control.exe will contain a file path to a .cpl or .inf, related to CVE-2021-40444. In this instance, we narrow our detection down to the Office suite as a parent process. During triage, review all file modifications. Capture and analyze any artifacts on disk. review parallel and child processes to identify further suspicious behavior

• Type: TTP
• Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
• Datamodel: Endpoint- Datasource: Splunk Add-on for Sysmon
• Last Updated: 2021-09-08
• Author: Michael Haag, Splunk
• ID: 053e027c-10c7-11ec-8437-acde48001122

Annotations

ATT&CK

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1566	Phishing	Initial Access

| T1566.001 | Spearphishing Attachment | Initial Access |

Kill Chain Phase

• Exploitation

NIST

CIS20

CVE

| ID | Summary | [CVSS](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln-metrics/cvss) | | ----------- | ----------- | -------------- | | [CVE-2021-40444](https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-40444) | Microsoft MSHTML Remote Code Execution Vulnerability | 6.8 |

Search

| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name IN ("winword.exe","excel.exe","powerpnt.exe","mspub.exe","visio.exe","wordpad.exe","wordview.exe") Processes.process_name=control.exe by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process 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)`
| `office_spawning_control_filter`

Macros

The SPL above uses the following Macros:

• security_content_summariesonly
• security_content_ctime

Note that office_spawning_control_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Required field

• 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

How To Implement

To successfully implement this search you need to be ingesting information on process that include the name of the process responsible for the changes from your endpoints into the Endpoint datamodel in the Processes node. In addition, confirm the latest CIM App 4.20 or higher is installed and the latest TA for the endpoint product.

Known False Positives

Limited false positives should be present.

Associated Analytic story

• Spearphishing Attachments
• Microsoft MSHTML Remote Code Execution CVE-2021-40444

RBA

Risk Score	Impact	Confidence	Message
80.0	80	100	An instance of parent_process_name spawning process_name was identified on endpoint dest clicking a suspicious attachment.

Reference

• https://strontic.github.io/xcyclopedia/library/control.exe-1F13E714A0FEA8887707DFF49287996F.html
• https://app.any.run/tasks/36c14029-9df8-439c-bba0-45f2643b0c70/
• https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/011/
• https://www.echotrail.io/insights/search/control.exe
• https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2021-40444
• https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/master/atomics/T1218.002/T1218.002.yaml

Test Dataset

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

• https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/splunk/attack_data/master/datasets/attack_techniques/T1566.001/macro/windows-sysmon_control.log

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