Name:Windows Suspicious Child Process of Consent.EXE id:8194b5d4-41ae-4ce7-adfb-92d375e341d2 version:1 date:None author:Raven Tait, Splunk status:production type:Anomaly Description:The following analytic detects unexpected child processes spawned by consent.exe, the Windows UAC consent dialog binary.
Consent.exe is responsible solely for rendering the UAC elevation prompt and should not spawn child processes under normal operating conditions; child process creation from this parent is a known indicator of UAC bypass and privilege escalation techniques.
The detection identifies any executable launched as a child of consent.exe, excluding the expected WerFault.exe error reporting process, which may legitimately appear in crash scenarios.
This behavior is associated with UAC bypass exploits and has been observed in multiple post-exploitation frameworks as a means of obtaining elevated privileges without triggering a visible UAC prompt. Data_source:
-Sysmon EventID 1
-Windows Event Log Security 4688
-CrowdStrike ProcessRollup2
search:| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime
from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where
Processes.parent_process_name="consent.exe" Processes.process_name="*.exe" NOT Processes.process_name="WerFault.exe"
how_to_implement:The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the `Processes` node of the `Endpoint` data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process. known_false_positives:Legitimate software installations or system updates may occasionally trigger child processes under consent.exe but these should be rare.
Verify any flagged activity against known administrative actions or recent software changes. References: -https://securelist.com/cve-2024-30051/112618/ drilldown_searches: earliest_offset:'$info_min_time$' latest_offset:'$info_max_time$' name:'View the detection results for - "$user$" and "$dest$"' search:'%original_detection_search% | search user = "$user$" dest = "$dest$"' name:'View risk events for the last 7 days for - "$user$" and "$dest$"' search:'| from datamodel Risk.All_Risk | search normalized_risk_object IN ("$user$", "$dest$") | stats count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime values(search_name) as "Search Name" values(risk_message) as "Risk Message" values(analyticstories) as "Analytic Stories" values(annotations._all) as "Annotations" values(annotations.mitre_attack.mitre_tactic) as "ATT&CK Tactics" by normalized_risk_object | `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` | `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`' earliest_offset:'7d' latest_offset:'0' analytic_story:['Windows Privilege Escalation', 'Unusual Processes']
