UAC Bypass via Windows Firewall Snap-In Hijackedit

Identifies attempts to bypass User Account Control (UAC) by hijacking the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Windows Firewall snap-in. Attackers bypass UAC to stealthily execute code with elevated permissions.

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: 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

process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.parent.name == "mmc.exe" and /*
process.Ext.token.integrity_level_name == "high" can be added in
future for tuning */ /* args of the Windows Firewall SnapIn */
process.parent.args == "WF.msc" and process.name != "WerFault.exe"

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 5 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (7.15.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only