This documentation contains work-in-progress information for future Elastic Stack and Cloud releases. Use the version selector to view supported release docs. It also contains some Elastic Cloud serverless information. Check out our serverless docs for more details.
Microsoft Exchange Worker Spawning Suspicious Processes
editMicrosoft Exchange Worker Spawning Suspicious Processes
editIdentifies suspicious processes being spawned by the Microsoft Exchange Server worker process (w3wp). This activity may indicate exploitation activity or access to an existing web shell backdoor.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- logs-endpoint.events.*
- winlogbeat-*
- logs-windows.*
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:
Tags:
- Elastic
- Host
- Windows
- Threat Detection
- Initial Access
Version: 100 (version history)
Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.12.0
Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0
Rule authors: Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
Investigation guide
editRule query
editprocess where event.type == "start" and process.parent.name : "w3wp.exe" and process.parent.args : "MSExchange*AppPool" and (process.name : ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe", "powershell_ise.exe") or process.pe.original_file_name in ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "pwsh.dll", "powershell_ise.exe"))
Threat mapping
editFramework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
-
Tactic:
- Name: Initial Access
- ID: TA0001
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0001/
-
Technique:
- Name: Exploit Public-Facing Application
- ID: T1190
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1190/
Rule version history
edit- Version 100 (8.5.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 5 (8.4.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 3 (8.2.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 2 (7.16.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
process where event.type == "start" and process.parent.name : "w3wp.exe" and process.parent.args : "MSExchange*AppPool" and (process.name : ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe") or process.pe.original_file_name : ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe"))
-