Disabling User Account Control via Registry Modificationedit

User Account Control (UAC) can help mitigate the impact of malware on Windows hosts. With UAC, apps and tasks always run in the security context of a non-administrator account, unless an administrator specifically authorizes administrator-level access to the system. This rule identifies registry value changes to bypass User Access Control (UAC) protection.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*
  • logs-windows.*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Privilege Escalation

Version: 1

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule queryedit

registry where event.type == "change" and registry.path : (
"HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\System\
\EnableLUA", "HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion
\\Policies\\System\\ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin", "HKLM\\SOFTWARE
\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\System\\PromptOnSecure
Desktop" ) and registry.data.strings : "0"

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM