disabling these features for legitimate purposes is not a common use case but can still be implemented by the administrators. filter as needed.

Techniques

T1112

Sample rules

Windows Disable Windows Group Policy Features Through Registry

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1112

Description

This analytic is to detect a suspicious registry modification to disable windows features. These techniques are seen in several ransomware malware to impair the compromised host to make it hard for analyst to mitigate or response from the attack. Disabling these known features make the analysis and forensic response more hard. Disabling these feature is not so common but can still be implemented by the administrator for security purposes. In this scenario filters for users that are allowed doing this is needed.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Registry WHERE (Registry.registry_path= "*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\Explorer\\*" OR Registry.registry_path= "*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Policies\\System\\*" Registry.registry_value_name IN ("NoDesktop", "NoFind", "NoControlPanel", "NoFileMenu", "NoSetTaskbar", "NoTrayContextMenu", "TaskbarLockAll", "NoThemesTab","NoPropertiesMyDocuments","NoVisualStyleChoice","NoColorChoice","NoPropertiesMyDocuments") Registry.registry_value_data = "0x00000001") BY _time span=1h Registry.dest Registry.user Registry.registry_path Registry.registry_key_name Registry.registry_value_name Registry.registry_value_data Registry.process_guid 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Registry)` 
| where isnotnull(registry_value_data) 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_disable_windows_group_policy_features_through_registry_filter`