Windows Defender Disabled via Registry Modification

edit

Windows Defender Disabled via Registry Modificationedit

Identifies modifications to the Windows Defender registry settings to disable the service or set the service to be started manually.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

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
  • Defense Evasion

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.15.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guideedit

## Triage and analysis

Detections should be investigated to identify if the hosts and users are authorized to use this tool. As this rule detects post-exploitation process activity, investigations into this should be prioritized.

Rule queryedit

registry where event.type in ("creation", "change") and
((registry.path:"HKLM\\SOFTWARE\\Policies\\Microsoft\\Windows
Defender\\DisableAntiSpyware" and registry.data.strings:"1") or
(registry.path:"HKLM\\System\\ControlSet*\\Services\\WinDefend\\Start"
and registry.data.strings in ("3", "4")))

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 3 (7.15.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.13.0 release)
  • Formatting only