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.
Suspicious RDP ActiveX Client Loaded
editSuspicious RDP ActiveX Client Loaded
editIdentifies suspicious Image Loading of the Remote Desktop Services ActiveX Client (mstscax), this may indicate the presence of RDP lateral movement capability.
Rule type: eql
Rule indices:
- logs-endpoint.events.*
- winlogbeat-*
- 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
References:
Tags:
- Elastic
- Host
- Windows
- Threat Detection
- Lateral Movement
Version: 100 (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
Investigation guide
editRule query
editany where (event.category == "library" or (event.category == "process" and event.action : "Image loaded*")) and (dll.name : "mstscax.dll" or file.name : "mstscax.dll") and /* depending on noise in your env add here extra paths */ process.executable : ( "C:\\Windows\\*", "C:\\Users\\Public\\*", "C:\\Users\\Default\\*", "C:\\Intel\\*", "C:\\PerfLogs\\*", "C:\\ProgramData\\*", "\\Device\\Mup\\*", "\\\\*" ) and /* add here FPs */ not process.executable : ("C:\\Windows\\System32\\mstsc.exe", "C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\mstsc.exe")
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/
Rule version history
edit- Version 100 (8.5.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 6 (8.4.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
library where dll.name : "mstscax.dll" and /* depending on noise in your env add here extra paths */ process.executable : ( "C:\\Windows\\*", "C:\\Users\\Public\\*", "C:\\Users\\Default\\*", "C:\\Intel\\*", "C:\\PerfLogs\\*", "C:\\ProgramData\\*", "\\Device\\Mup\\*", "\\\\*" ) and /* add here FPs */ not process.executable : ("C:\\Windows\\System32\\mstsc.exe", "C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\mstsc.exe")
-
- Version 4 (8.2.0 release)
-
- Formatting only
- Version 3 (7.12.0 release)
-
-
Updated query, changed from:
library where file.name == "mstscax.dll" and /* depending on noise in your env add here extra paths */ wildcard(process.executable, "C:\\Windows\\*", "C:\\Users\\Public\\*", "C:\\Users\\Default\\*", "C:\\Intel\\*", "C:\\PerfLogs\\*", "C:\\ProgramData\\*", "\\Device\\Mup\\*", "\\\\*") and /* add here FPs */ not process.executable in ("C:\\Windows\\System32\\mstsc.exe", "C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\mstsc.exe")
-
- Version 2 (7.11.2 release)
-
- Formatting only