IMPORTANT: No additional bug fixes or documentation updates will be released for this version. For the latest information, see the current release documentation.

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InstallUtil Process Making Network Connections

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InstallUtil Process Making Network Connections

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Identifies InstallUtil.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity as InstallUtil is often leveraged by adversaries to execute code and evade detection.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

logs-endpoint.events.*
winlogbeat-*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 21

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
Defense Evasion

Version: 2 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Rule query

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/* the benefit of doing this as an eql sequence vs kql is this will
limit to alerting only on the first network connection */ sequence by
process.entity_id [process where event.type in ("start",
"process_started") and process.name : "installutil.exe"] [network
where process.name : "installutil.exe" and network.direction ==
"outgoing"]

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
Technique:
- Name: Signed Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/

Rule version history

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Version 2 (7.11.0 release)

Formatting only

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