Svchost spawning Cmd

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Identifies a suspicious parent child process relationship with cmd.exe descending from svchost.exe

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

• winlogbeat-*
• logs-endpoint.events.*
• logs-windows.*

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References: None

Tags:

• Elastic
• Host
• Windows
• Threat Detection
• Execution

Version: 11

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define event.ingested and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate event.ingested to @timestamp for this rule to work.

process where event.type == "start" and
  process.parent.name : "svchost.exe" and process.name : "cmd.exe" and
  not (process.pe.original_file_name : "cmd.exe" and process.args : (
    "??:\\Program Files\\Npcap\\CheckStatus.bat?",
    "?:\\Program Files\\Npcap\\CheckStatus.bat",
    "\\system32\\cleanmgr.exe",
    "?:\\Windows\\system32\\silcollector.cmd",
    "\\system32\\AppHostRegistrationVerifier.exe",
    "\\system32\\ServerManagerLauncher.exe"))

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• Tactic:

  • Name: Execution
  • ID: TA0002
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0002/

• Technique:

  • Name: Command and Scripting Interpreter
  • ID: T1059
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1059/