Windows Terminating Lsass Process

Name:Windows Terminating Lsass Process
id:7ab3c319-a4e7-4211-9e8c-40a049d0dba6
version:7
date:2025-02-10
author:Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
status:production
type:Anomaly
Description:The following analytic detects a suspicious process attempting to terminate the Lsass.exe process. It leverages Sysmon EventCode 10 logs to identify processes granted PROCESS_TERMINATE access to Lsass.exe. This activity is significant because Lsass.exe is a critical process responsible for enforcing security policies and handling user credentials. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could indicate an attempt to perform credential dumping, privilege escalation, or evasion of security policies, potentially leading to unauthorized access and persistence within the environment.
Data_source:

• -Sysmon EventID 10

search:`sysmon` EventCode=10 TargetImage=*lsass.exe GrantedAccess = 0x1
| stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime by CallTrace EventID GrantedAccess Guid Opcode ProcessID SecurityID SourceImage SourceProcessGUID SourceProcessId TargetImage TargetProcessGUID TargetProcessId UserID dest granted_access parent_process_exec parent_process_guid parent_process_id parent_process_name parent_process_path process_exec process_guid process_id process_name process_path signature signature_id user_id vendor_product
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| `windows_terminating_lsass_process_filter`

how_to_implement:This search requires Sysmon Logs and a Sysmon configuration, which includes EventCode 10 for lsass.exe. This search uses an input macro named `sysmon`. We strongly recommend that you specify your environment-specific configurations (index, source, sourcetype, etc.) for Windows Sysmon logs. Replace the macro definition with configurations for your Splunk environment. The search also uses a post-filter macro designed to filter out known false positives.
known_false_positives:unknown
References:
  -https://blog.talosintelligence.com/2022/03/threat-advisory-doublezero.html
drilldown_searches:
 name:'View the detection results for - "$dest$"'
 search:'%original_detection_search% | search dest = "$dest$"'
 earliest_offset:'$info_min_time$'
 latest_offset:'$info_max_time$'
 name:'View risk events for the last 7 days for - "$dest$"'
 search:'| from datamodel Risk.All_Risk | search normalized_risk_object IN ("$dest$") starthoursago=168 | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime values(search_name) as "Search Name" values(risk_message) as "Risk Message" values(analyticstories) as "Analytic Stories" values(annotations._all) as "Annotations" values(annotations.mitre_attack.mitre_tactic) as "ATT&CK Tactics" by normalized_risk_object | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`'
 earliest_offset:'$info_min_time$'
 latest_offset:'$info_max_time$'
tags:
  analytic_story:
    - 'Data Destruction'
    - 'Double Zero Destructor'
  asset_type:Endpoint
  mitre_attack_id:
    - 'T1562.001'
  product:
    - 'Splunk Enterprise'
    - 'Splunk Enterprise Security'
    - 'Splunk Cloud'
  security_domain:endpoint

tests:
 name:'True Positive Test'
 attack_data:
  data: https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/splunk/attack_data/master/datasets/malware/doublezero_wiper/sysmon.log
  source: XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational
  sourcetype: XmlWinEventLog
manual_test:None