Potential Privilege Escalation via MSI Repair


Description

Identifies a browser process navigates to the Microsoft Help page followed by spawning an elevated process. This may indicate a successful exploitation for privilege escalation abusing a vulnerable Windows Installer repair setup.

Query · eql

process where event.action == "start" and process.Ext.token.integrity_level_name == "system" and
 process.parent.name in~ ("chrome.exe", "msedge.exe", "brave.exe", "whale.exe", "browser.exe", "dragon.exe", "vivaldi.exe",
                          "opera.exe", "iexplore", "firefox.exe", "waterfox.exe", "iexplore.exe", "tor.exe", "safari.exe") and
 process.parent.command_line like "*go.microsoft.com*" and
 not process.executable :
            ("?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\*\\Installer\\chrmstp.exe")
Raw source Potential Privilege Escalation via MSI Repair · Elastic TOML
Esc
Published by elastic/protections-artifacts ↗, licensed under Elastic License 2.0 ↗. Reproduced here unmodified.
[rule]
description = """
Identifies a browser process navigates to the Microsoft Help page followed by spawning an elevated process. This may
indicate a successful exploitation for privilege escalation abusing a vulnerable Windows Installer repair setup.
"""
id = "e02f4cc7-ca8a-4b5b-83a9-479f83aa74b3"
license = "Elastic License v2"
name = "Potential Privilege Escalation via MSI Repair"
os_list = ["windows"]
reference = ["https://sec-consult.com/blog/detail/msi-installer-repair-to-system-a-detailed-journey/"]
version = "1.0.5"

query = '''
process where event.action == "start" and process.Ext.token.integrity_level_name == "system" and
 process.parent.name in~ ("chrome.exe", "msedge.exe", "brave.exe", "whale.exe", "browser.exe", "dragon.exe", "vivaldi.exe",
                          "opera.exe", "iexplore", "firefox.exe", "waterfox.exe", "iexplore.exe", "tor.exe", "safari.exe") and
 process.parent.command_line like "*go.microsoft.com*" and
 not process.executable :
            ("?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft\\Edge\\Application\\msedge.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\*\\Installer\\chrmstp.exe")
'''

min_endpoint_version = "7.15.0"
[[actions]]
action = "kill_process"
field = "process.entity_id"
state = 0
tree = true

[[optional_actions]]
action = "rollback"
field = "process.entity_id"
state = 0

[[threat]]
framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"
[[threat.technique]]
id = "T1068"
name = "Exploitation for Privilege Escalation"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1068/"


[threat.tactic]
id = "TA0004"
name = "Privilege Escalation"
reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0004/"

[internal]
min_endpoint_version = "7.15.0"

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