Suspicious Cmd Execution via WMI

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Identifies suspicious command execution (cmd) via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) on a remote host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Execution

Version: 4 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.2.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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## Config

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.

Rule query

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process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.parent.name : "WmiPrvSE.exe" and process.name : "cmd.exe" and
process.args : "\\\\127.0.0.1\\*" and process.args : ("2>&1", "1>")

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 4 (8.2.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
    process.parent.name == "WmiPrvSE.exe" and process.name == "cmd.exe"
    and wildcard(process.args, "\\\\127.0.0.1\\*") and process.args in
    ("2>&1", "1>")
Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
  • Formatting only