WMI Incoming Lateral Movement

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Identifies processes executed via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) on a remote host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement, but could be noisy if administrators use WMI to remotely manage hosts.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

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
• Lateral Movement

Version: 100

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

sequence by host.id with maxspan = 2s

 /* Accepted Incoming RPC connection by Winmgmt service */

  [network where process.name : "svchost.exe" and network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress") and
   source.ip != "127.0.0.1" and source.ip != "::1" and source.port >= 49152 and destination.port >= 49152
  ]

  /* Excluding Common FPs Nessus and SCCM */

  [process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name : "WmiPrvSE.exe" and
   not process.args : ("C:\\windows\\temp\\nessus_*.txt",
                       "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\nessus_*.TMP",
                       "C:\\Windows\\CCM\\SystemTemp\\*",
                       "C:\\Windows\\CCMCache\\*",
                       "C:\\CCM\\Cache\\*")
   ]

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• Tactic:

  • Name: Lateral Movement
  • ID: TA0008
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0008/

• Tactic:

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

• Technique:

  • Name: Windows Management Instrumentation
  • ID: T1047
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1047/