sam is a critical windows service, stopping it would cause major issues on an endpoint this makes false positive rare. althoughno false positives have been identified.

Techniques

T1489

Sample rules

Windows Security Account Manager Stopped

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1489

Description

The following analytic detects the stopping of the Windows Security Account Manager (SAM) service via command-line, typically using the “net stop samss” command. This detection leverages data from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents, focusing on process names and command-line executions. This activity is significant because stopping the SAM service can disrupt authentication mechanisms and is often associated with ransomware attacks like Ryuk. If confirmed malicious, this action could lead to unauthorized access, privilege escalation, and potential system-wide compromise.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime FROM datamodel=Endpoint.Processes
  WHERE (
        "Processes.process_name"="net*.exe" "Processes.process"="*stop \"samss\"*"
    )
  BY Processes.action Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name
     Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_exec Processes.parent_process_guid
     Processes.parent_process_id Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process_path
     Processes.process Processes.process_exec Processes.process_guid
     Processes.process_hash Processes.process_id Processes.process_integrity_level
     Processes.process_name Processes.process_path Processes.user
     Processes.user_id Processes.vendor_product

| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`

| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`

| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`

| `windows_security_account_manager_stopped_filter`