Mshta Making Network Connections

Identifies Mshta.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity, as Mshta is often leveraged by adversaries to execute malicious scripts and evade detection.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-20m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Defense Evasion

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.15.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan=10m [process where
event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.name :
"mshta.exe" and not process.parent.name :
"Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.exe" and not
(process.parent.executable : "C:\\Amazon\\Amazon
Assistant\\amazonAssistantService.exe" or
process.parent.executable : "C:\\TeamViewer\\TeamViewer.exe") and
not process.args : "ADSelfService_Enroll.hta"] [network where
process.name : "mshta.exe"]

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
Technique:
- Name: Signed Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/

Rule version history

edit

Version 5 (7.15.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 4 (7.14.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan=2h [process where
event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.name :
"mshta.exe" and not process.parent.name :
"Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.exe" and not
(process.parent.executable : "C:\\Amazon\\Amazon
Assistant\\amazonAssistantService.exe" or
process.parent.executable : "C:\\TeamViewer\\TeamViewer.exe") and
not process.args : "ADSelfService_Enroll.hta"] [network where
process.name : "mshta.exe"]

Version 3 (7.12.0 release)

Formatting only

Version 2 (7.11.0 release)

Formatting only

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