Detection rules › Sigma

Bypass UAC Using SilentCleanup Task

Severity
high
Author
frack113, Nextron Systems
Source
upstream

Detects the setting of the environement variable "windir" to a non default value. Attackers often abuse this variable in order to trigger a UAC bypass via the "SilentCleanup" task. The SilentCleanup task located in %windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe is an auto-elevated task that can be abused to elevate any file with administrator privileges without prompting UAC.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Privilege EscalationT1548.002 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Bypass User Account Control
Defense EvasionT1548.002 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism: Bypass User Account Control

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: selection

TargetObject|endswith: '\Environment\windir'

Stage 2: not 1 of filter_main_default

Details: '%SystemRoot%'

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
Detailseq
  • %SystemRoot%
TargetObjectends_with
  • \Environment\windir