Potential SharpRDP Behavior

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-01-15
Created 5 years ago on 2020-11-11

About

Identifies potential behavior of SharpRDP, which is a tool that can be used to perform authenticated command execution against a remote target via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) for the purposes of lateral movement.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Lateral MovementData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql
Severity
high
Risk Score
73
MITRE ATT&CK™

Lateral Movement (TA0008)(opens in a new tab or window)

License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-endpoint.events.process-*logs-endpoint.events.registry-*logs-endpoint.events.network-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
/* Incoming RDP followed by a new RunMRU string value set to cmd, powershell, taskmgr or tsclient, followed by process execution within 1m */

sequence by host.id with maxspan=1m
  [network where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and process.name : "svchost.exe" and destination.port == 3389 and
   network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress") and network.transport == "tcp" and
   source.ip != "127.0.0.1" and source.ip != "::1"
  ]

  [registry where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "change" and process.name : "explorer.exe" and
   registry.path : ("HKEY_USERS\\*\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Explorer\\RunMRU\\*") and
   registry.data.strings : ("cmd.exe*", "powershell.exe*", "taskmgr*", "\\\\tsclient\\*.exe\\*")
  ]

  [process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
   (process.parent.name : ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "taskmgr.exe") or process.args : ("\\\\tsclient\\*.exe")) and
   not process.name : "conhost.exe"
   ]

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential SharpRDP Behavior in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).