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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [8.16] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Execution of Persistent Suspicious Program

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Execution of Persistent Suspicious Program

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Identifies execution of suspicious persistent programs (scripts, rundll32, etc.) by looking at process lineage and command line usage.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

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
  • Persistence

Version: 101 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.11.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

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/* userinit followed by explorer followed by early child process of
explorer (unlikely to be launched interactively) within 1m */ sequence
by host.id, user.name with maxspan=1m [process where event.type ==
"start" and process.name : "userinit.exe" and process.parent.name :
"winlogon.exe"] [process where event.type == "start" and
process.name : "explorer.exe"] [process where event.type == "start"
and process.parent.name : "explorer.exe" and /* add suspicious
programs here */ process.pe.original_file_name in ("cscript.exe",
"wscript.exe", "PowerShell.EXE",
"MSHTA.EXE", "RUNDLL32.EXE",
"REGSVR32.EXE", "RegAsm.exe",
"MSBuild.exe", "InstallUtil.exe")
and /* add potential suspicious paths here */ process.args :
("C:\\Users\\*", "C:\\ProgramData\\*", "C:\\Windows\\Temp\\*",
"C:\\Windows\\Tasks\\*", "C:\\PerfLogs\\*", "C:\\Intel\\*") ]

Threat mapping

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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version history

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Version 101 (8.5.0 release)

  • Updated query, changed from:

    /* userinit followed by explorer followed by early child process of
explorer (unlikely to be launched interactively) within 1m */ sequence
by host.id, user.name with maxspan=1m [process where event.type in
("start", "process_started") and process.name : "userinit.exe" and
process.parent.name : "winlogon.exe"] [process where event.type in
("start", "process_started") and process.name : "explorer.exe"]
[process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
process.parent.name : "explorer.exe" and /* add suspicious programs
here */ process.pe.original_file_name in ("cscript.exe",
"wscript.exe", "PowerShell.EXE",
"MSHTA.EXE", "RUNDLL32.EXE",
"REGSVR32.EXE", "RegAsm.exe",
"MSBuild.exe", "InstallUtil.exe")
and /* add potential suspicious paths here */ process.args :
("C:\\Users\\*", "C:\\ProgramData\\*", "C:\\Windows\\Temp\\*",
"C:\\Windows\\Tasks\\*", "C:\\PerfLogs\\*", "C:\\Intel\\*") ]
Version 3 (8.4.0 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 2 (7.12.0 release)
  • Formatting only
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