WMI Incoming Lateral Movement

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Identifies processes executed via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) on a remote host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement, but could be noisy if administrators use WMI to remotely manage hosts.

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: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.4.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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sequence by host.id with maxspan = 2s /* Accepted Incoming RPC
connection by Winmgmt service */ [network where process.name :
"svchost.exe" and network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress") and
source.ip != "127.0.0.1" and source.ip != "::1" and source.port >=
49152 and destination.port >= 49152 ] /* Excluding Common FPs
Nessus and SCCM */ [process where event.type in ("start",
"process_started") and process.parent.name : "WmiPrvSE.exe" and not
process.args : ("C:\\windows\\temp\\nessus_*.txt",
"C:\\windows\\TEMP\\nessus_*.TMP",
"C:\\Windows\\CCM\\SystemTemp\\*",
"C:\\Windows\\CCMCache\\*",
"C:\\CCM\\Cache\\*") ]

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 5 (8.4.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 4 (8.0.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    sequence by host.id with maxspan = 2s /* Accepted Incoming RPC
    connection by Winmgmt service */ [network where process.name :
    "svchost.exe" and network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress") and
    source.address != "127.0.0.1" and source.address != "::1" and
    source.port >= 49152 and destination.port >= 49152 ] /* Excluding
    Common FPs Nessus and SCCM */ [process where event.type in
    ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name : "WmiPrvSE.exe"
    and not process.args : ("C:\\windows\\temp\\nessus_*.txt",
    "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\nessus_*.TMP",
    "C:\\Windows\\CCM\\SystemTemp\\*",
    "C:\\Windows\\CCMCache\\*",
    "C:\\CCM\\Cache\\*") ]
Version 3 (7.16.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    sequence by host.id with maxspan = 2s /* Accepted Incoming RPC
    connection by Winmgmt service */ [network where process.name :
    "svchost.exe" and network.direction == "incoming" and
    source.address != "127.0.0.1" and source.address != "::1" and
    source.port >= 49152 and destination.port >= 49152 ] /* Excluding
    Common FPs Nessus and SCCM */ [process where event.type in
    ("start", "process_started") and process.parent.name : "WmiPrvSE.exe"
    and not process.args : ("C:\\windows\\temp\\nessus_*.txt",
    "C:\\windows\\TEMP\\nessus_*.TMP",
    "C:\\Windows\\CCM\\SystemTemp\\*",
    "C:\\Windows\\CCMCache\\*",
    "C:\\CCM\\Cache\\*") ]
Version 2 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only