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Incoming DCOM Lateral Movement via MSHTA

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Incoming DCOM Lateral Movement via MSHTA

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Identifies the use of Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) to execute commands from a remote host, which are launched via the HTA Application COM Object. This behavior may indicate an attacker abusing a DCOM application to move laterally while attempting to evading detection.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

winlogbeat-*
logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

Runs every: 5 minutes

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

https://codewhitesec.blogspot.com/2018/07/lethalhta.html

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Windows
Threat Detection
Lateral Movement

Version: 1

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Rule query

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sequence with maxspan=1m [process where event.type in ("start",
"process_started") and process.name : "mshta.exe" and
process.args : "-Embedding" ] by host.id, process.entity_id
[network where event.type == "start" and process.name : "mshta.exe"
and network.direction == "incoming" and network.transport ==
"tcp" and source.port > 49151 and destination.port > 49151 and
not source.address in ("127.0.0.1", "::1") ] by host.id,
process.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/

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