IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.
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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [8.3] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Persistence via Microsoft Outlook VBA

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IMPORTANT: This documentation is no longer updated.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

Persistence via Microsoft Outlook VBA

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Detects attempts to establish persistence on an endpoint by installing a rogue Microsoft Outlook VBA Template.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

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

Potential false positives

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A legitimate VBA for Outlook is usually configured interactively via OUTLOOK.EXE.

Investigation guide

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## 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

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file where event.type != "deletion" and file.path :
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Outlook\\VbaProject.OTM"

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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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.path,
"C:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Roaming\\Microsoft\\Outlook\\VbaProject.OTM")
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only
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