Ingress Transfer via Windows BITS

Last updated 6 months ago on 2025-02-03
Created 3 years ago on 2023-01-13

About

Identifies downloads of executable and archive files via the Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). Adversaries could leverage Windows BITS transfer jobs to download remote payloads.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionTactic: Command and ControlData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

Command and Control (TA0011)(opens in a new tab or window)

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(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.file-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
file where host.os.type == "windows" and event.action == "rename" and
  process.name : "svchost.exe" and file.Ext.original.name : "BIT*.tmp" and 
  (file.extension : ("exe", "zip", "rar", "bat", "dll", "ps1", "vbs", "wsh", "js", "vbe", "pif", "scr", "cmd", "cpl") or
   file.Ext.header_bytes : "4d5a*") and 
 
  /* noisy paths, for hunting purposes you can use the same query without the following exclusions */
  not file.path : ("?:\\Program Files\\*", "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\*", "?:\\Windows\\*", "?:\\ProgramData\\*\\*") and 
 
  /* lot of third party SW use BITS to download executables with a long file name */
  not length(file.name) > 30 and
  not file.path : (
        "?:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Local\\Temp*\\wct*.tmp",
        "?:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Local\\Adobe\\ARM\\*\\RdrServicesUpdater*.exe",
        "?:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Local\\Adobe\\ARM\\*\\AcroServicesUpdater*.exe",
        "?:\\Users\\*\\AppData\\Local\\Docker Desktop Installer\\update-*.exe"
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Ingress Transfer via Windows BITS 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).