Malicious Metasploit Stager Delivery via mshta Remote HTA (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.001PowerShell
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1218.005Mshta
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects mshta fetching and running a remote HTA over HTTP, the Metasploit stager delivery used after CVE-2023-22527 Confluence exploitation in the LockBit intrusion to inject shellcode into memory. Adversaries abuse mshta as a trusted binary to execute remote HTML applications that bootstrap post-exploitation frameworks, so an mshta process referencing an http hta URL is a high-confidence execution signal.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059.001 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious PowerShell Spawned by mshta.exe in FakeSG Chain (via process_creation)

Suspicious Hidden PowerShell Spawned by MSHTA for Boot Persistence (via process_creation)

Malicious HTA Payload Download and Execution via PowerShell One-Liner (via process_creation)

Suspicious PowerShell Loader Spawned by mshta via UNC5142 ClickFix

Suspicious Script Interpreter Spawned by mshta

Malicious mshta Spawning PowerShell Loader via ClickFix

Malicious Forfiles Proxy Execution Launching PowerShell and MSHTA in PEAKLIGHT Chain (via process_creation)

Malicious ClickFix PowerShell Launching mshta with Remote URL (via process_creation)

Suspicious PowerShell Query of MSHTA Application Class in PEAKLIGHT Chain (via ps_script)

Malicious Metasploit Stager Delivery via mshta Remote HTA (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1059.001 · 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 →