Mshta Making Network Connections

Identifies Mshta.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity, as Mshta is often leveraged by adversaries to execute malicious scripts and evade detection.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

logs-endpoint.events.process-*
logs-endpoint.events.network-*
winlogbeat-*
logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-20m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

https://www.elastic.co/security-labs/elastic-protects-against-data-wiper-malware-targeting-ukraine-hermeticwiper

Tags:

Domain: Endpoint
OS: Windows
Use Case: Threat Detection
Tactic: Defense Evasion
Data Source: Elastic Defend
Data Source: Sysmon

Version: 108

Rule authors:

Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Rule query

edit

sequence by process.entity_id with maxspan=10m
  [process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and process.name : "mshta.exe" and
     not process.parent.name : "Microsoft.ConfigurationManagement.exe" and
     not (process.parent.executable : "C:\\Amazon\\Amazon Assistant\\amazonAssistantService.exe" or
          process.parent.executable : "C:\\TeamViewer\\TeamViewer.exe") and
     not process.args : "ADSelfService_Enroll.hta"]
  [network where host.os.type == "windows" and process.name : "mshta.exe"]

Framework: MITRE ATT&CK^TM

Tactic:
- Name: Defense Evasion
- ID: TA0005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0005/
Technique:
- Name: System Binary Proxy Execution
- ID: T1218
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Mshta
- ID: T1218.005
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/005/

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