Detection rules › Splunk

Windows Phishing Outlook Drop Dll In FORM Dir

Author
Teoderick Contreras, Splunk
Source
upstream

The following analytic detects the creation of a DLL file by an outlook.exe process in the AppData\Local\Microsoft\FORMS directory. This detection leverages data from the Endpoint.Processes and Endpoint.Filesystem datamodels, focusing on process and file creation events. This activity is significant as it may indicate an attempt to exploit CVE-2024-21378, where a custom MAPI form loads a potentially malicious DLL. If confirmed malicious, this could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code, leading to further system compromise or data exfiltration.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Initial AccessT1566 Phishing

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon11FileCreate

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: tstats

tstats WHERE Processes.process_name="outlook.exe" BY _time, Processes.action, Processes.dest, Processes.original_file_name, Processes.parent_process, Processes.parent_process_exec, Processes.parent_process_guid, Processes.parent_process_id, Processes.parent_process_name, Processes.parent_process_path, Processes.process, Processes.process_exec, Processes.process_guid, Processes.process_hash, Processes.process_id, Processes.process_integrity_level, Processes.process_name, Processes.process_path, Processes.user, Processes.user_id, Processes.vendor_product

Stage 2: search

search

Stage 3: join

join type=inner (...)

Stage 4: 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
Filesystem.file_nameeq
  • "*.dll" corpus 3 (splunk 3)
Filesystem.file_patheq
  • "*\\AppData\\Local\\Microsoft\\FORMS\\IPM*"
Processes.process_nameeq
  • outlook.exe corpus 2 (splunk 2)