IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
« Persistence via Login or Logout Hook Persistence via Microsoft Outlook VBA »
Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [8.2] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Persistence via Microsoft Office AddIns

edit
IMPORTANT: This documentation is no longer updated. Refer to Elastic's version policy and the latest documentation.

Persistence via Microsoft Office AddIns

edit

Detects attempts to establish persistence on an endpoint by abusing Microsoft Office add-ins.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

  • logs-endpoint.events.*
  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-windows.*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Persistence

Version: 4 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

edit
## Config

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule query

edit
file where event.type != "deletion" and file.extension :
("wll","xll","ppa","ppam","xla","xlam") and file.path : (
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Word\\Startup\\*",
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\AddIns\\*",
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Excel\\XLSTART\\*" )

Threat mapping

edit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

edit
Version 4 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)

  • Updated query, changed from:

    file where event.type != "deletion" and
wildcard(file.extension,"wll","xll","ppa","ppam","xla","xlam") and
wildcard(file.path,
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Word\\Startup\\*",
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\AddIns\\*",
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Excel\\XLSTART\\*")
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
« Persistence via Login or Logout Hook Persistence via Microsoft Outlook VBA »