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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [8.2] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference
« Rare User Logon Registry Persistence via AppInit DLL »

Registry Persistence via AppCert DLLedit

Detects attempts to maintain persistence by creating registry keys using AppCert DLLs. AppCert DLLs are loaded by every process using the common API functions to create processes.

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

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Persistence

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

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

registry where /* uncomment once stable length(bytes_written_string) >
0 and */ registry.path :
"HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Control\\Session Manager\\AppCertDLLs\\*"

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 5 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (8.1.0 release)

  • Updated query, changed from:

    registry where /* uncomment once stable length(bytes_written_string) >
0 and */ registry.path :
"HKLM\\SYSTEM\\ControlSet*\\Control\\Session Manager\\AppCertDLLs\\*"
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
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