Antivirus Software Discovery via tasklist and findstr

ATT&CK techniques

Discovery

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
- T1057Process Discovery
- T1518.001Security Software Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects reconnaissance that pipes tasklist output through findstr to enumerate running security product processes. CastleLoader performs this check to identify installed defenses before deploying its payload.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1057 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Security Software Discovery via tasklist and findstr (via process_creation)

Suspicious Security Process Enumeration via Tasklist And Findstr

Suspicious System Reconnaissance Output Redirected to PDF File (via process_creation)

Malicious Turla Kopiluwak Reconnaissance Output to Windows Temp via process_creation

Suspicious Defender and Session Reconnaissance via sc query and quser

Suspicious Security Software Discovery via findstr Filtering of AV Process Names (via process_creation)

Suspicious Bazar Network Reconnaissance Command Batch

Suspicious Privilege Discovery Spawned by M365 Copilot Process

Suspicious Security Product Enumeration via tasklist

Antivirus Software Discovery via tasklist and findstr

Pivot detection · T1057 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →