Malicious Invoke-WMIExec Lateral Movement Download and Execute (via ps_script)

PremiumReviewedSigma · High · v1
Product
windows
Category
ps_script
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-05
Updated
2026-09-05

ATT&CK techniques

Lateral Movement
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a PowerShell one liner that downloads Invoke-WMIExec via a web client and executes it against a remote target using a pass the hash argument as observed in the MeshAgent and SuperShell intrusion. This chains in memory script download with WMI based lateral movement.

Related detections9 linkedT1021.006 — drag to rearrange
Windows process creation: child process spawned by winrshost.exe
Windows Winrs.exe Local Command Execution via localhost/loopback
Windows PowerShell: Invoke-Command targeting -ComputerName via script block
Windows PowerShell script enabling WinRM via Enable-PSRemoting
Windows HackTool Activity: Evil-WinRM Ruby Process with -i, -u, -p Arguments
Zeek HTTP POST to /wsman without Authorization — Possible OMIGOD unauthenticated RCE (CVE-2021-38647)
Windows remote PowerShell session activity via wsmprovhost.exe process relationships
Windows Remote PowerShell via PS Classic (wsmprovhost.exe, HostName=ServerRemoteHost)
Windows Remote PowerShell Session via PS Module ContextInfo and wsmprovhost.exe
Malicious Invoke-WMIExec Lateral Movement Download and Execute (via ps_script)
Pivot detection · T1021.006 · 9 related

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