Detection rules › Sigma

Suspicious File Encoded To Base64 Via Certutil.EXE

Severity
high
Author
Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
Source
upstream

Detects the execution of certutil with the "encode" flag to encode a file to base64 where the extensions of the file is suspicious

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Defense EvasionT1027 Obfuscated Files or Information

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: all of selection_img

or:
Image|endswith: '\certutil.exe'
OriginalFileName: CertUtil.exe

Stage 2: all of selection_cli

CommandLine|contains: -encode

Stage 3: all of selection_extension

or:
CommandLine|contains: .acl
CommandLine|contains: .bat
CommandLine|contains: .doc
CommandLine|contains: .gif
CommandLine|contains: .jpeg
CommandLine|contains: .jpg
CommandLine|contains: .mp3
CommandLine|contains: .pdf
CommandLine|contains: .png
CommandLine|contains: .ppt
CommandLine|contains: .tmp
CommandLine|contains: .xls
CommandLine|contains: .xml

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

FieldKindValues
CommandLinematch
  • -encode corpus 3 (sigma 3)
  • .acl
  • .bat corpus 8 (sigma 8)
  • .doc corpus 4 (sigma 4)
  • .gif corpus 6 (sigma 6)
  • .jpeg corpus 6 (sigma 6)
  • .jpg corpus 7 (sigma 7)
  • .mp3 corpus 2 (sigma 2)
  • .pdf corpus 3 (sigma 3)
  • .png corpus 7 (sigma 7)
  • .ppt corpus 4 (sigma 4)
  • .tmp corpus 3 (sigma 3)
  • .xls corpus 4 (sigma 4)
  • .xml corpus 5 (sigma 5)
Imageends_with
  • \certutil.exe corpus 34 (sigma 34)
OriginalFileNameeq
  • CertUtil.exe corpus 13 (sigma 13)