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.
Service Command Lateral Movement
editService Command Lateral Movement
editIdentifies 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: 101 (version history)
Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.10.0
Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 8.5.0
Rule authors: Elastic
Rule license: Elastic License v2
Rule query
editsequence by process.entity_id with maxspan = 1m [process where
event.type == "start" 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
editFramework: MITRE ATT&CKTM
-
Tactic:
- Name: Lateral Movement
- ID: TA0008
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0008/
-
Technique:
- Name: Remote Services
- ID: T1021
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1021/
-
Tactic:
- Name: Persistence
- ID: TA0003
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0003/
-
Technique:
- Name: Create or Modify System Process
- ID: T1543
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1543/
-
Tactic:
- Name: Execution
- ID: TA0002
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0002/
-
Technique:
- Name: System Services
- ID: T1569
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1569/
Rule version history
edit- Version 101 (8.5.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
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"]
-
- Version 4 (8.4.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- 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