sigmahighHunting

Critical Hive In Suspicious Location Access Bits Cleared

Detects events from the Kernel-General ETW indicating that the access bits of a hive with a system like hive name located in the temp directory have been reset. This occurs when an application tries to access a hive and the hive has not be recognized since the last 7 days (by default). Registry hive dumping utilities such as QuarksPwDump were seen emitting this behavior.

MITRE ATT&CK

T1003.002

credential-access

Detection Query

selection:
  EventID: 16
  Provider_Name: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General
  HiveName|contains:
    - \Temp\SAM
    - \Temp\SECURITY
condition: selection

Author

Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)

Created

2017-05-15

Data Sources

windowssystem

Platforms

windows

References

https://github.com/nasbench/Misc-Research/blob/b20da2336de0f342d31ef4794959d28c8d3ba5ba/ETW/Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General.md

Tags

attack.credential-accessattack.t1003.002

Raw Content

title: Critical Hive In Suspicious Location Access Bits Cleared
id: 39f919f3-980b-4e6f-a975-8af7e507ef2b
related:
    - id: 839dd1e8-eda8-4834-8145-01beeee33acd
      type: obsolete
status: test
description: |
    Detects events from the Kernel-General ETW indicating that the access bits of a hive with a system like hive name located in the temp directory have been reset.
    This occurs when an application tries to access a hive and the hive has not be recognized since the last 7 days (by default).
    Registry hive dumping utilities such as QuarksPwDump were seen emitting this behavior.
references:
    - https://github.com/nasbench/Misc-Research/blob/b20da2336de0f342d31ef4794959d28c8d3ba5ba/ETW/Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General.md
author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems)
date: 2017-05-15
modified: 2024-01-18
tags:
    - attack.credential-access
    - attack.t1003.002
logsource:
    product: windows
    service: system
detection:
    selection:
        EventID: 16
        Provider_Name: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General
        HiveName|contains:
            - '\Temp\SAM'
            - '\Temp\SECURITY'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Unknown
level: high