Service Command Lateral Movement

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Identifies use of sc.exe to create, modify, or start services on remote hosts. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement but will be noisy if commonly done by admins.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5m

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References: None

Tags:

  • Domain: Endpoint
  • OS: Windows
  • Use Case: Threat Detection
  • Tactic: Lateral Movement
  • Data Source: Elastic Defend

Version: 105

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan = 1m
  [process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
     (process.name : "sc.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name : "sc.exe") and
      process.args : "\\\\*" and process.args : ("binPath=*", "binpath=*") and
      process.args : ("create", "config", "failure", "start")]
  [network where host.os.type == "windows" and process.name : "sc.exe" and destination.ip != "127.0.0.1"]

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM