139. LOLBAS Abused by DBatLoader: Detection Opportunities

Hello everyone!

We know a lot about LOLBAS. But we usually see only some of them used ITW. So I always excited to see not so common examples.

Today we'll look at two examples, esentutl.exe and extrac32.exe, as seen in this report on DBatLoader.

Both executables are used to copy legtimate command and scripting interpreters - Windows Command Shell and PowerShell.

The first example is related to Windows Command Shell:

esentutl /y C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /d C:\Users\Public\alpha.pif /o

We can use it to build the query:

event_type: "processcreatewin"

AND

proc_file_name: "esentutl.exe"

AND

cmdline: ("cmd.exe" OR "powershell.exe")

The second is related to PowerShell:

extrac32.exe /C /Y C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe C:\Users\Public\xkn.pif

Here we can use a very similar query:

event_type: "processcreatewin"

AND

proc_file_name: "extrac32.exe"

AND

cmdline: ("cmd.exe" OR "powershell.exe")

See you tomorrow!

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