ATT&CK coverage › Technique
Office Application Startup T1137
Adversaries may leverage Microsoft Office-based applications for persistence between startups. Microsoft Office is a fairly common application suite on Windows-based operating systems within an enterprise network. There are multiple mechanisms that can be used with Office for persistence when an Office-based application is started; this can include the use of Office Template Macros and add-ins.
Events covered
2 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.
| Provider | Event ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | 11 | FileCreate |
| Sysmon | 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
Authoring guide
Patterns shared across the 11 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.
Fields filtered most (6 distinct)
The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.
Top indicator values (39 distinct)
Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique.
Rules under this technique
Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.
Sigma 8 rules
- IE Change Domain Zone
- New Outlook Macro Created
- Outlook Macro Execution Without Warning Setting Enabled
- Outlook Security Settings Updated - Registry
- Potential Persistence Via Microsoft Office Startup Folder
- Potential Persistence Via Outlook LoadMacroProviderOnBoot Setting
- Registry Modification to Hidden File Extension
- Suspicious Outlook Macro Created