Detection: Attempt To Disable Services

Description

The following analytic identifies Windows Service Control, sc.exe, attempting to disable a service. This is typically identified in parallel with other instances of service enumeration of attempts to stop a service and then disable it. Adversaries utilize this technique to terminate security services or other related services to continue there objective and evade detections.

Annotations

No annotations available.

Implementation

To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting logs with the process name, parent process, and command-line executions from your endpoints. If you are using Sysmon, you must have at least version 6.0.4 of the Sysmon TA.

Known False Positives

It is possible administrative scripts may start/stop/delete services. Filter as needed.

Associated Analytic Story

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Risk Message Risk Score Impact Confidence
An instance of $parent_process_name$ spawning $process_name$ was identified on endpoint $dest_device_id$ by user $dest_user_id$ attempting to disable a service. 36 60 60
The Risk Score is calculated by the following formula: Risk Score = (Impact * Confidence/100). Initial Confidence and Impact is set by the analytic author.

References


Version: 6