Malicious PowerShell Spawned by PHP CGI Process

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

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

What it detects

This rule detects the php-cgi.exe process spawning PowerShell which indicates exploitation of CVE-2024-4577 argument injection to achieve remote code execution on Windows PHP servers as seen in the persistent attacks against Japanese organizations. A web facing PHP CGI interpreter launching PowerShell is not expected during normal operation and signals server compromise.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059.001 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious PowerShell Spawned by PHP CGI Process

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.

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