Svchost spawning Cmd

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Identifies a suspicious parent child process relationship with cmd.exe descending from svchost.exe

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Execution

Version: 12

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

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## Config

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define `event.ingested` and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate `event.ingested` to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule query

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process where event.type == "start" and
  process.parent.name : "svchost.exe" and process.name : "cmd.exe" and
  not (process.pe.original_file_name : "cmd.exe" and process.args : (
    "??:\\Program Files\\Npcap\\CheckStatus.bat?",
    "?:\\Program Files\\Npcap\\CheckStatus.bat",
    "\\system32\\cleanmgr.exe",
    "?:\\Windows\\system32\\silcollector.cmd",
    "\\system32\\AppHostRegistrationVerifier.exe",
    "\\system32\\ServerManagerLauncher.exe"))

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM