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: 5m

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References: None

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Defense Evasion

Version: 8

Rule authors:

Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

edit

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"]

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/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Mshta
- ID: T1218.005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/005/

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