Malicious Equation Editor Child Process Execution via process_creation
- Product
- windows
- Category
- process_creation
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-05-03
- Updated
- 2026-08-28
ATT&CK techniques
Initial Access → Defense EvasionRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
What it detects
This rule detects the Microsoft Equation Editor EQNEDT32.EXE spawning any child process which almost always indicates exploitation of the CVE-2017-11882 memory corruption vulnerability. SideWinder delivered RTF documents that exploited Equation Editor to launch mshta.exe and fetch a remote HTA payload against maritime and nuclear targets. Equation Editor never legitimately creates child processes so this is a high confidence exploitation signal.
Reporting behind it
- securelist.comhttps://securelist.com/sidewinder-apt-updates-its-toolset-and-targets-nuclear-sector/115847/
- attack.mitre.orghttps://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1203/
- attack.mitre.orghttps://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1221/
- cybereason.comhttps://www.cybereason.com/blog/research/portdoor-new-chinese-apt-backdoor-attack-targets-russian-defense-sector
- attack.mitre.orghttps://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1566/001/
- attack.mitre.orghttps://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1027/
- uptycs.comhttps://www.uptycs.com/blog/threat-research-report-team/confucius-apt-deploys-warzone-rat
- cyble.comhttps://cyble.com/blog/threat-actor-employs-powershell-backed-steganography-in-recent-spam-campaigns/
Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.
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