SolarWinds Process Disabling Services via Registryedit

Identifies a SolarWinds binary modifying the start type of a service to be disabled. An adversary may abuse this technique to manipulate relevant security services.

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: 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 registry.path :
"HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Services\\*\\Start" and
registry.data.strings : ("4", "0x00000004") and process.name : (
"SolarWinds.BusinessLayerHost*.exe",
"ConfigurationWizard*.exe", "NetflowDatabaseMaintenance*.exe",
"NetFlowService*.exe", "SolarWinds.Administration*.exe",
"SolarWinds.Collector.Service*.exe" ,
"SolarwindsDiagnostics*.exe")

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 registry.path :
    "HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Services\\*\\Start" and
    registry.data.strings == "4" and process.name : (
    "SolarWinds.BusinessLayerHost*.exe", "ConfigurationWizard*.exe",
    "NetflowDatabaseMaintenance*.exe", "NetFlowService*.exe",
    "SolarWinds.Administration*.exe",
    "SolarWinds.Collector.Service*.exe" ,
    "SolarwindsDiagnostics*.exe")
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only