Detection rules › Sigma

Registry Tampering by Potentially Suspicious Processes

Severity
medium
Author
Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)
Source
upstream

Detects suspicious registry modifications made by suspicious processes such as script engine processes such as WScript, or CScript etc. These processes are rarely used for legitimate registry modifications, and their activity may indicate an attempt to modify the registry without using standard tools like regedit.exe or reg.exe, potentially for evasion and persistence.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
ExecutionT1059.005 Command and Scripting Interpreter: Visual Basic
PersistenceT1112 Modify Registry
Defense EvasionT1112 Modify Registry

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon12RegistryEvent (Object create and delete)
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)
Sysmon14RegistryEvent (Key and Value Rename)

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: selection

or:
Image|endswith: '\cscript.exe'
Image|endswith: '\mshta.exe'
Image|endswith: '\wscript.exe'

Stage 2: not 1 of filter_main_legit_wscript

or:
TargetObject|contains: 'SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Notifications\Data\'
TargetObject|contains: 'Software\Microsoft\Windows Script\Settings\Telemetry\wscript.exe\'
TargetObject|contains: 'Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\'
TargetObject|contains: '\Services\bam\State\UserSettings\S-1-'
Image|endswith: '\wscript.exe'

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
Imageends_with
  • \cscript.exe corpus 64 (sigma 64)
  • \mshta.exe corpus 57 (sigma 57)
  • \wscript.exe corpus 64 (sigma 64)
TargetObjectmatch
  • SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Notifications\Data\
  • Software\Microsoft\Windows Script\Settings\Telemetry\wscript.exe\
  • Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\
  • \Services\bam\State\UserSettings\S-1-