Detection rules › Splunk

Sunburst Correlation DLL and Network Event

Author
Patrick Bareiss, Splunk
Source
upstream

The following analytic identifies the loading of the malicious SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll by SolarWinds.BusinessLayerHost.exe and subsequent DNS queries to avsvmcloud.com. It uses Sysmon EventID 7 for DLL loading and Event ID 22 for DNS queries, correlating these events within a 12-14 day period. This activity is significant as it indicates potential Sunburst malware infection, a known supply chain attack. If confirmed malicious, this could lead to unauthorized network access, data exfiltration, and further compromise of the affected systems.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
ExecutionT1203 Exploitation for Client Execution

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon7Image loaded
Sysmon22DNSEvent (DNS query)

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

search ((EventCode=22 QueryName="*avsvmcloud.com") OR (EventCode=7 ImageLoaded="*SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll"))

Stage 2: eventstats

eventstats dc(EventCode) AS dc_events

Stage 3: where

where dc_events=2

Stage 4: stats

stats BY Image, ImageLoaded, dest, loaded_file, loaded_file_path, original_file_name, process_exec, process_guid, process_hash, process_id, process_name, process_path, service_dll_signature_exists, service_dll_signature_verified, signature, signature_id, user_id, vendor_product

Stage 5: search

search

Stage 6: search

search

Stage 7: search

search `macro`

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
EventCodeeq
  • 22 corpus 15 (splunk 15)
  • 7 corpus 35 (splunk 35)
ImageLoadedeq
  • *SolarWinds.Orion.Core.BusinessLayer.dll
QueryNameeq
  • *avsvmcloud.com
dc_eventseq
  • 2