Detection rules › Splunk

Windows Impair Defense Disable Web Evaluation

Author
Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
Source
upstream

The following analytic detects modifications to the Windows registry entry "EnableWebContentEvaluation" to disable Windows Defender web content evaluation. It leverages data from the Endpoint.Registry datamodel, specifically monitoring changes where the registry value is set to "0x00000000". This activity is significant as it indicates an attempt to impair browser security features, potentially allowing malicious web content to bypass security checks. If confirmed malicious, this could lead to users interacting with harmful scripts or unsafe web elements, increasing the risk of system exploitation and security breaches.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Defense EvasionT1562.001 Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: tstats

tstats WHERE Registry.registry_path="*\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\AppHost\\EnableWebContentEvaluation" Registry.registry_value_data="0x00000000" 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

search

Stage 3: search

search

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.

FieldKindValues
Registry.registry_patheq
  • "*\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\AppHost\\EnableWebContentEvaluation"
Registry.registry_value_dataeq
  • "0x00000000" corpus 27 (splunk 27)