Unusual Windows Path Activity

Identifies processes started from atypical folders in the file system, which might indicate malware execution or persistence mechanisms. In corporate Windows environments, software installation is centrally managed and it is unusual for programs to be executed from user or temporary directories. Processes executed from these locations can denote that a user downloaded software directly from the Internet or a malicious script or macro executed malware.

Rule type: machine_learning

Machine learning job: windows_anomalous_path_activity_ecs, v2_windows_anomalous_path_activity_ecs

Machine learning anomaly threshold: 50

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 15 minutes

Searches indices from: now-45m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

Version: 5 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.7.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.14.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2