IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates
will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the
current release documentation.
Disabling Windows Defender Security Settings via PowerShelledit
Identifies use of the Set-MpPreference PowerShell command to disable or weaken certain Windows Defender settings.
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
- Defense Evasion
Version: 3 (version history)
Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.14.0
Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0
Rule authors: Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
Potential false positivesedit
Planned Windows Defender configuration changes.
Investigation guideedit
## Config If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.
Rule queryedit
process where event.type == "start" and (process.name : ("powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe", "powershell_ise.exe") or process.pe.original_file_name in ("powershell.exe", "pwsh.dll", "powershell_ise.exe")) and process.args : "Set-MpPreference" and process.args : ("-Disable*", "Disabled", "NeverSend", "-Exclusion*")
Threat mappingedit
Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
-
Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
-
Technique:
- Name: Impair Defenses
- ID: T1562
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1562/
Rule version historyedit
- Version 3 (8.2.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 2 (7.16.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
process where event.type == "start" and (process.name : ("powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe") or process.pe.original_file_name == "PowerShell.EXE") and process.args : "Set-MpPreference" and process.args : ("-Disable*", "Disabled", "NeverSend", "-Exclusion*")
-