Detection rules › Splunk
Windows Impair Defense Delete Win Defender Context Menu
The following analytic detects the deletion of the Windows Defender context menu entry from the registry. It leverages data from the Endpoint datamodel, specifically monitoring registry actions where the path includes "*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\EPP" and the action is 'deleted'. This activity is significant as it is commonly associated with Remote Access Trojan (RAT) malware attempting to disable security features. If confirmed malicious, this could allow an attacker to impair defenses, facilitating further malicious activities such as unauthorized access, persistence, and data exfiltration.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Defense Evasion | T1562.001 Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event ID | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | 13 | RegistryEvent (Value Set) |
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: tstats
tstats WHERE Registry.action="deleted" Registry.registry_path="*\\shellex\\ContextMenuHandlers\\EPP" BY Registry.action, Registry.dest, Registry.process_guid, Registry.process_id, Registry.registry_hive, Registry.registry_path, Registry.registry_key_name, Registry.registry_value_data, Registry.registry_value_name, Registry.registry_value_type, Registry.status, Registry.user, Registry.vendor_product
Stage 2: search
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Stage 3: search
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Stage 4: search
search
Stage 5: 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.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
Registry.action | eq |
|
Registry.registry_path | eq |
|