{"description":"Trending threats, MITRE ATT\u0026CK coverage, and detection metadata — refreshed continuously.","feed_url":"https://feed.craftedsignal.io/tags/parent-pid-spoofing/","home_page_url":"https://feed.craftedsignal.io/","items":[{"_cs_actors":[],"_cs_cves":[],"_cs_exploited":false,"_cs_products":["Microsoft Defender XDR","Elastic Defend"],"_cs_severities":["medium"],"_cs_tags":["privilege-escalation","defense-evasion","windows","process-injection","masquerading","access-token-manipulation","parent-pid-spoofing"],"_cs_type":"advisory","_cs_vendors":["Microsoft"],"content_html":"\u003cp\u003eThis detection identifies Windows programs executed with unexpected parent processes, which may indicate masquerading, process injection, or other anomalous behavior. The detection logic focuses on deviations from established parent-child process relationships within the Windows operating system. This rule leverages data from multiple sources, including Elastic Defend, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender XDR, SentinelOne Cloud Funnel, Sysmon, and Windows Security Event Logs, to enhance detection coverage. This is important for defenders as unusual parent-child process relationships can be indicative of various malicious activities, including privilege escalation and defense evasion techniques employed by threat actors. The rule aims to provide early detection of potentially malicious activities by identifying deviations from the expected process execution patterns.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"attack-chain\"\u003eAttack Chain\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe attacker gains initial access to the system (e.g., through phishing or exploiting a vulnerability).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe attacker executes a malicious payload that attempts to masquerade as a legitimate process.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe malicious process is launched with an unexpected parent process, deviating from normal Windows process relationships. For example, \u003ccode\u003eautochk.exe\u003c/code\u003e running without \u003ccode\u003esmss.exe\u003c/code\u003e as its parent.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe malicious process attempts to inject code into other processes for privilege escalation or defense evasion, leveraging techniques like process hollowing.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe injected code gains elevated privileges, allowing the attacker to perform sensitive actions on the system.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe attacker uses the elevated privileges to move laterally within the network, compromising additional systems.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe attacker attempts to maintain persistence by creating scheduled tasks or modifying registry keys.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe attacker achieves their final objective, such as data exfiltration or deploying ransomware.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"impact\"\u003eImpact\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA successful attack exploiting unusual parent-child relationships can lead to privilege escalation, allowing attackers to gain control of the compromised system. This can result in data breaches, system downtime, and financial losses. The rule aims to mitigate these risks by detecting suspicious process executions early in the attack chain. While the exact number of potential victims and sectors targeted is not explicitly mentioned, the broad applicability of Windows systems makes this a widespread threat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"recommendation\"\u003eRecommendation\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeploy the provided Sigma rules to your SIEM and tune for your environment to detect unusual parent-child process relationships (see \u003ccode\u003erules\u003c/code\u003e section).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eEnable process creation logging with command line arguments in your Windows environment using Sysmon or Windows Security Event Logs to ensure the necessary data is available for detection.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eInvestigate and baseline common parent-child process relationships in your environment to reduce false positives.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eIntegrate your SIEM with threat intelligence feeds to identify known malicious processes and their associated parent processes.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eConfigure endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions like Elastic Defend, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender XDR, and SentinelOne to collect and analyze process execution data (see \u003ccode\u003esetup\u003c/code\u003e section in the source URL).\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eRefer to the investigation guide linked in the source URL to triage alerts related to unusual parent-child process relationships.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n","date_modified":"2024-01-03T10:00:00Z","date_published":"2024-01-03T10:00:00Z","id":"/briefs/2024-01-unusual-parent-child/","summary":"This rule identifies Windows programs run from unexpected parent processes, which could indicate masquerading or other strange activity on a system, potentially indicating process injection, masquerading, access token manipulation, or parent PID spoofing.","title":"Unusual Parent-Child Relationship Detection","url":"https://feed.craftedsignal.io/briefs/2024-01-unusual-parent-child/"}],"language":"en","title":"CraftedSignal Threat Feed — Parent-Pid-Spoofing","version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1"}