Suspicious Command Prompt Spawned by Winlogon

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Priv Esc

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.003Windows Command Shell
Persistence
- T1547.004Winlogon Helper DLL
Priv Esc
- T1547.004Winlogon Helper DLL
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects winlogon.exe spawning cmd.exe, an anomalous parent-child relationship used by Backdoor.Stupig to run a SYSTEM command prompt on the secure logon desktop. Winlogon rarely launches an interactive shell.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059.003 — drag to rearrange

Malicious IIS Worker Spawning nslookup via WS_FTP Deserialization

Malicious Winlogon Shell or Userinit Persistence Modification (via registry_set)

Malicious Metasploit Reverse Shell Injection in SQL Server (via process_creation)

Suspicious Fake Crypto Wallet Installer Batch Script Staging (via file_event)

Obfuscated Encoded PowerShell Payload Deployed via Process Execution (via process_creation)

Operator Bloopers Cobalt Strike Modules

Malicious KB Document Masqueraded Executable Spawned by Script Interpreter via RoKRAT Loader (via process_creation)

Malicious SCMBanker ClickFix Payload Fetch via Curl Piped to Cmd

Malicious Payload Assembly via MZ Header Prepend and copy Concatenation (via process_creation)

Suspicious Command Prompt Spawned by Winlogon

Pivot detection · T1059.003 · 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 →