Windows: Hijack Legit RDP Session to Move Laterally

Rule ID

PH_Rule_SIGMA_327

Default Status

Enabled

Description

Detects the usage of tsclient share to place a backdoor on the RDP source machine's startup folder. Terminal Server Client (tsclient) is a discontinued frontend for remote desktop tools, which allow remotely controlling one computer from another. This rule is adapted from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/windows/file/file_event/file_event_win_tsclient_filewrite_startup.yml

Severity

Detection Technology

Correlation

Rule Mode

Streaming

MITRE ATT&CK® Tactics

Credential Access

Credential Access consists of techniques for stealing credentials like account names and passwords. Techniques used to get credentials include keylogging or credential dumping. Using legitimate credentials can give adversaries access to systems, make them harder to detect, and provide the opportunity to create more accounts to help achieve their goals.

https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0006

MITRE ATT&CK® Techniques

T1557.002

Man-in-the-Middle: ARP Cache Poisoning

Adversaries may poison Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) caches to position themselves between the communication of two or more networked devices. This activity may be used to enable follow-on behaviors such as Network Sniffing or Transmitted Data Manipulation. An adversary may passively wait for an ARP request to poison the ARP cache of the requesting device. The adversary may reply with their MAC address, thus deceiving the victim by making them believe that they are communicating with the intended networked device. For the adversary to poison the ARP cache, their reply must be faster than the one made by the legitimate IP address owner. Adversaries may also send a gratuitous ARP reply that maliciously announces the ownership of a particular IP address to all the devices in the local network segment. Adversaries may use ARP cache poisoning as a means to man-in-the-middle (MiTM) network traffic. This activity may be used to collect and/or relay data such as credentials, especially those sent over an insecure, unencrypted protocol.

https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1557/002

Impacts

Server

Data Source

Microsoft Windows Sysmon via FortiSIEM Agent

Detection

Correlation

Remediation Guidance

Determine if this was an authorized penetration testing activity or authorized sysadmin activity. Otherwise, there is no reason for this activity to be occurring. The host should be quarantined and investigated immediately. Collect the process hash and check for malware match. Investigate what other incidents are occurring on that host during that time frame.

Time Window

If the following pattern or patterns match an ingested event within the given time window in seconds, trigger an incident.

300 seconds

Trigger Conditions

If the following defined pattern/s occur within a 300 second time window.

Filter

SubPattern Definitions

SubPattern Name: Filter

This is the named definition of the event query, this is important if multiple subpatterns are defined to distinguish them.

SubPattern Query

This is the query logic that matches incoming events

eventType="Win-Sysmon-11-FileCreate" AND procName REGEXP "\\mstsc\.exe$" AND fileName REGEXP ".*\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Start Menu\\Programs\\Startup\\.*"

Group by Attributes

This defines how matching events are aggregated, only events with the same matching attribute values are grouped into one unique incident ID

fileName,hostName,procName

Aggregate Constraint

This is most typically a numerical constraint that defines when the rule should trigger an incident

COUNT(*) >= 1

Incident Attribute Mapping

This section defines which fields in matching raw events should be mapped to the incident attributes in the resulting incident.

The available raw event attributes to map are limited to the group by attributes and the aggregate event constraint fields for each subpattern

 fileName = Filter.fileName,
hostName = Filter.hostName,
procName = Filter.procName

FortiSIEM Rules