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Elastic Docs ›Elastic Security Solution [8.5] ›Detections and alerts ›Prebuilt rule reference

Suspicious WMI Image Load from MS Office

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Suspicious WMI Image Load from MS Office

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Identifies a suspicious image load (wmiutils.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity where child processes are spawned via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This technique can be used to execute code and evade traditional parent/child processes spawned from Microsoft Office products.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Execution

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

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Rule query
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any where (event.category == "library" or (event.category ==
"process" and event.action : "Image loaded*")) and process.name :
("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE", "POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE",
"MSACCESS.EXE") and (dll.name : "wmiutils.dll" or file.name :
"wmiutils.dll")











Threat mapping
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Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM














Rule version history
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Version 100 (8.5.0 release)








    

  • 
Formatting only

    • 









Version 7 (8.4.0 release)








    

  • 

    Updated query, changed from:
    

    

    

    library where process.name : ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE",
"POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and event.action :
"load" and event.category : "library" and dll.name :
"wmiutils.dll"
    

    

    • 









Version 5 (8.2.0 release)








    

  • 
Formatting only

    • 









Version 4 (7.15.0 release)








    

  • 
Formatting only

    • 









Version 3 (7.12.0 release)








    

  • 

    Updated query, changed from:
    

    

    

    library where process.name in ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE",
"POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and event.action ==
"load" and event.category == "library" and file.name ==
"wmiutils.dll"
    

    

    • 









Version 2 (7.11.2 release)








    

  • 
Formatting only

    • 




















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