Malicious IIS Worker Process Spawning Command Shell Reconnaissance
- Product
- windows
- Category
- process_creation
- Author
- HuntRule
- Published
- 2026-09-11
- Updated
- 2026-09-11
ATT&CK techniques
Initial Access → PersistenceRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
What it detects
This rule detects the IIS worker process w3wp.exe spawning cmd.exe or powershell.exe to run host reconnaissance such as ipconfig, tasklist or dir. UAT-6382 exploited a Cityworks zero-day to drop web shells and then executed this recon under the web server context, a hallmark of post-exploitation web-shell activity that precedes tooling download and Cobalt Strike deployment.
Reporting behind it
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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