Service Command Lateral Movement

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Identifies use of sc.exe to create, modify, or start services on remote hosts. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement but will be noisy if commonly done by admins.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: low

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
  • Lateral Movement

Version: 3 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan = 1m [process where
event.type in ("start", "process_started") and (process.name :
"sc.exe" or process.pe.original_file_name : "sc.exe") and
process.args : "\\\\*" and process.args : ("binPath=*", "binpath=*")
and process.args : ("create", "config", "failure", "start")]
[network where process.name : "sc.exe" and destination.ip !=
"127.0.0.1"]

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan=1m [process where
    event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
    /* uncomment once in winlogbeat */ (process.name == "sc.exe" /*
    or process.pe.original_file_name == "sc.exe" */ ) and
    /* case insensitive */ wildcard(process.args, "\\\\*") and
    wildcard(process.args, "binPath=*", "binpath=*") and
    (process.args : "create" or process.args : "config" or
    process.args : "failure" or process.args : "start")] [network
    where process.name : "sc.exe" and destination.ip != "127.0.0.1"]
Version 2 (7.11.0 release)
  • Formatting only