Elastic Security Detection Rules

MS Office Macro Security Registry Modifications

Last updated 4 months ago on 2025-08-26
Created 4 years ago on 2022-01-12

About

Microsoft Office Products offer options for users and developers to control the security settings for running and using Macros. Adversaries may abuse these security settings to modify the default behavior of the Office Application to trust future macros and/or disable security warnings, which could increase their chances of establishing persistence.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: SysmonData Source: Microsoft Defender for EndpointData Source: SentinelOneData Source: CrowdstrikeLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Modify Registry (T1112)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Execution (TA0002)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ User Execution (T1204)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
winlogbeat-*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*endgame-*logs-m365_defender.event-*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*logs-crowdstrike.fdr*
Related Integrations

windows(external, opens in a new tab or window)

m365_defender(external, opens in a new tab or window)

sentinel_one_cloud_funnel(external, opens in a new tab or window)

crowdstrike(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query
text code block:
registry where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "change" and
    registry.value : ("AccessVBOM", "VbaWarnings") and
    registry.data.strings : ("0x00000001", "1")

/*
    Full registry key paths omitted due to data source variations:
    "HKCU\\S-1-*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Office\\*\\Security\\AccessVBOM"
    "HKCU\\S-1-*\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Office\\*\\Security\\VbaWarnings"
*/

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect MS Office Macro Security Registry Modifications 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(external, opens in a new tab or window).