IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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Mshta Making Network Connections

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Mshta Making Network Connections

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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: 7 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.4.0

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: System Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/

Rule version history

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Version 7 (8.4.0 release)

Formatting only

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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