Remotely Started Services via RPC

Identifies remote execution of Windows services over remote procedure call (RPC). This could be indicative of lateral movement, but will be noisy if commonly done by administrators."

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
Lateral Movement

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.16.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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sequence with maxspan=1s [network where process.name :
"services.exe" and network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress")
and network.transport == "tcp" and source.port >= 49152 and
destination.port >= 49152 and source.address not in ("127.0.0.1",
"::1") ] by host.id, process.entity_id [process where
event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name :
"services.exe" and not (process.name : "svchost.exe" and
process.args : "tiledatamodelsvc") and not (process.name :
"msiexec.exe" and process.args : "/V") /* uncomment if psexec
is noisy in your environment */ /* and not process.name :
"PSEXESVC.exe" */ ] by host.id, process.parent.entity_id

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Lateral Movement
- ID: TA0008
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0008/
Technique:
- Name: Remote Services
- ID: T1021
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1021/

Rule version history

edit

Version 3 (7.16.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

sequence with maxspan=1s [network where process.name :
"services.exe" and network.direction == "incoming" and
network.transport == "tcp" and source.port >= 49152 and
destination.port >= 49152 and source.address not in ("127.0.0.1",
"::1") ] by host.id, process.entity_id [process where
event.type in ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name :
"services.exe" and not (process.name : "svchost.exe" and
process.args : "tiledatamodelsvc") and not (process.name :
"msiexec.exe" and process.args : "/V") /* uncomment if psexec
is noisy in your environment */ /* and not process.name :
"PSEXESVC.exe" */ ] by host.id, process.parent.entity_id

Version 2 (7.12.0 release)

Formatting only

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