Detection rules › Splunk

Windows Defender ASR Block Events

Author
Michael Haag, Splunk
Source
upstream

This detection searches for Windows Defender ASR block events. ASR is a feature of Windows Defender Exploit Guard that prevents actions and apps that are typically used by exploit-seeking malware to infect machines. ASR rules are applied to processes and applications. When a process or application attempts to perform an action that is blocked by an ASR rule, an event is generated. This detection searches for ASR block events that are generated when a process or application attempts to perform an action that is blocked by an ASR rule. Typically, these will be enabled in block most after auditing and tuning the ASR rules themselves. Set to TTP once tuned.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Initial AccessT1566.001 Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment, T1566.002 Phishing: Spearphishing Link
ExecutionT1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Windows-Defender1121
Windows-Defender1126
Windows-Defender1129
Windows-Defender1131
Windows-Defender1133

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: search

search EventCode IN (1121, 1126, 1129, 1131, 1133)

Stage 2: stats

stats BY host, Path, Parent_Commandline, Process_Name, ID, EventCode

Stage 3: lookup

lookup <lookup> ASR_Rule, ID

Stage 4: fillnull

fillnull

Stage 5: search

search

Stage 6: search

search

Stage 7: rename

rename

Stage 8: 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
EventCodein
  • 1121 corpus 2 (splunk 2)
  • 1126 corpus 3 (splunk 3)
  • 1129 corpus 2 (splunk 2)
  • 1131 corpus 2 (splunk 2)
  • 1133 corpus 2 (splunk 2)

Neighbors

Often fire together

Rules that target events appearing in the same incident timelines. They pattern-match on adjacent steps of the same TTP, so an alert from one is often paired with alerts from these. Useful for triage context and for assembling chained-detection rules.

Share event IDs (chain-detection candidates)

Rules that observe the same Windows event-ID pairs as this one. If you're authoring a multi-stage / sequence rule that spans these events, these are the existing detections that already cover one or both endpoints.