In this article I’d like to give you a brief practical introduction into the rule creation process. I’ll recommend some tools and draft a guide that helps you to write Sigma rules as quick and sound as possible.

1. Get the Repository

First download or clone our Sigma repository from Github.

It contains the rule base in the folder “./rules” and the Sigma rule compiler “./tools/sigmac”. We will use the existing rules as examples and create a new rule based on a similar existing one. We will then test that rule by using “sigmac”.

Sigma Github Repository

2. Copy and Edit YAML Files

My personal favorite editor for YAML is VSCode. It is free and runs on all major platforms. (alternatively you can use Atom with ‘language-yaml’ and ‘linter-js-yaml’ packages)

Visual Studio Code

I used the following extensions but I don’t know if they are still necessary. VSCode has improved a lot over the last 12 months and it is possible that it supports YAML highlighting and syntax checks by default now.

YAML Extensions for VSCode

We open the Sigma repository folder with “Open …” and see all existing rules.

Sigma Rules

3. Create a Sigma Rule

I selected an example in which we will create a Sigma rule from one of @JPCERT‘s findings in their awesome “Tool Analysis Result Sheet“.

We open the results for “Quarks PWDump“, a password dumper often used by Chinese threat groups. It creates temporary files that we want to detect in our SysInternals Sysmon log data. To collect the needed events we use Sysmon with @SwiftOnSecurity‘s Sysmon config file, Windows Event Forwarding or NXlog.

Quarks PWDump Analysis Results

So, what we do is to find a Sigma rule in the repository that we can use as a template for our new rule. We use the ‘search’ function to find a rule that looks for “File Creation” events (EventID 11) in Sysmon log data.

Sigma Example Rule

We find a rule that has a special format. It is a so-called “rule-collection“, which allows us to define a global section in the YAML file marked with “action: global” that will be applied to all other sections in that file during the search query generation process. This way you can define and create multiple search queries from a single YAML file.

In the case of our QuarksPwDump example we don’t need a rule collection, so we reduce the rule to a standard rule that contains a detection expression looking Sysmon Events with Event ID 11 and save it as “sysmon_quarkspw_filedump.yml” to a new file in the folder “./rules/windows/sysmon/”.

Simple Sysmon Sigma Rule

After that, we modify several fields of that rule:

• We give the rule a correct “title” and “description”
• We leave the status “experimental” to inform everyone that this is a new and untested rule
• We add the correct reference to the source from which we derived that rule
• We change the author of the rule
• We set the level of that rule to one of “low”, “medium”, “high” or “critical”
• We adjust the date (of last modification) and use the format %Y/%m%d (strftime)
• We check if the log source is correct, which is important for the field mappings used by “sigmac”

New Sigma Rule Header

Before we create the new “detection” section, we review the analysis report in detail.

Details: QuarksPwDump Temporary Files

We add a string with wildcards that matches on the ‘TargetFileName’ field in the Sysmon events of type 11. That’s what the new rule looks like:

QuarksPwDump Sigma Rule

4. Test the Rules

We test our newly created rule with “sigmac”, which requires python3. It is located in the “./tools” folder. It features several targets for which we can create searches/configurations from our rules.

Currently supported targets (10.02.2018):

• es-qs (Elastic Search Query Language)
• kibana
• xpack-watcher
• logpoint
• splunk
• grep
• fieldlist (only used to show all fields that require mapping in a config file)

Running “python3 sigmac -h” shows a help:

We test our new rule with “sigmac” and the target “splunk”.

Now the rule is ready for a pull request. Follow me or contact me on Twitter: @cyb3rops