Malicious MSDT Execution Spawned by Office Application via Follina (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1218System Binary Proxy Execution
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a Microsoft Office application spawning the Microsoft Support Diagnostic Tool. CVE-2022-30190 (Follina) abuses a remote Office template and the ms-msdt MSProtocol URI to launch MSDT and run attacker code even when macros are disabled. An Office parent invoking msdt.exe is a reliable signal of exploitation attempting code execution.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1218 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious MSDT Execution Spawned by Office Application via Follina (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1218 · 9 related

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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