Detection: Processes created by netsh

Description

This search looks for processes launching netsh.exe to execute various commands via the netsh command-line utility. Netsh.exe is a command-line scripting utility that allows you to, either locally or remotely, display or modify the network configuration of a computer that is currently running. Netsh can be used as a persistence proxy technique to execute a helper .dll when netsh.exe is executed. In this search, we are looking for processes spawned by netsh.exe that are executing commands via the command line. Deprecated because we have another detection of the same type.

Search

1
2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count values(Processes.process) as process min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.process_name=netsh.exe by Processes.user Processes.dest Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name 
3| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
4| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
5| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
6| `processes_created_by_netsh_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
Sysmon EventID 1	Windows	'xmlwineventlog'	'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational'

Macros Used

Annotations

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Implementation

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

It is unusual for netsh.exe to have any child processes in most environments. It makes sense to investigate the child process and verify whether the process spawned is legitimate. We explicitely exclude "C:\Program Files\rempl\sedlauncher.exe" process path since it is a legitimate process by Mircosoft.

Associated Analytic Story

• Netsh Abuse

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Detection Testing

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: GitHub | Version: 7