Windows Disable or Modify Tools Via Taskkill
Description
This analytic is designed to identify potentially malicious processes that terminate other processes using taskkill.exe. This technique has been observed in various malware instances, employed by adversaries and red teamers alike, to forcibly terminate other processes whether they be security products or other legitimate applications as part of their malicious activities. Detecting this anomaly serves as a valuable alert mechanism to identify suspicious processes or malware attempting to evade detection and disrupt system stability.
- Type: Anomaly
- Product: Splunk Enterprise, Splunk Enterprise Security, Splunk Cloud
- Datamodel: Endpoint
- Last Updated: 2023-09-13
- Author: Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
- ID: a43ae66f-c410-4b3d-8741-9ce1ad17ddb0
Annotations
ATT&CK
Kill Chain Phase
- Exploitation
NIST
- DE.AE
CIS20
- CIS 10
CVE
Search
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| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name = "taskkill.exe" Processes.process IN ("* /f*", "* /t*") Processes.process IN ("* /im*", "* /pid*") by Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.process_guid Processes.user Processes.dest
| `drop_dm_object_name("Processes")`
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `windows_disable_or_modify_tools_via_taskkill_filter`
Macros
The SPL above uses the following Macros:
windows_disable_or_modify_tools_via_taskkill_filter is a empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.
Required fields
List of fields required to use this analytic.
- _time
- Processes.dest
- Processes.user
- Processes.parent_process_name
- Processes.parent_process
- Processes.process_name
- Processes.process
- Processes.process_id
- Processes.parent_process_id
How To Implement
The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the Processes
node of the Endpoint
data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process.
Known False Positives
Network administrator can use this application to kill process during audit or investigation.
Associated Analytic Story
RBA
Risk Score | Impact | Confidence | Message |
---|---|---|---|
36.0 | 60 | 60 | A taskkill process to terminate process is executed on host- $dest$ |
The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.
Reference
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
source | version: 1