limited false positives will be present as control.exe does not natively load from writable paths as defined. one may add .cpl or .inf to the command-line if there is any false positives. tune as needed.

Techniques

Sample rules

Control Loading from World Writable Directory

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1218
- T1218.002

Description

The following detection identifies control.exe loading either a .cpl or .inf from a writable directory. This is related to CVE-2021-40444. During triage, review parallel processes, parent and child, for further suspicious behaviors. In addition, capture file modifications and analyze.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where (Processes.process_name=control.exe OR Processes.original_file_name=CONTROL.EXE) AND Processes.process IN ("*\\appdata\\*", "*\\windows\\temp\\*", "*\\programdata\\*") by Processes.dest Processes.user Processes.parent_process_name Processes.process_name Processes.process Processes.process_id Processes.parent_process_id Processes.original_file_name 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `control_loading_from_world_writable_directory_filter`