Suspicious Disabling of WinRM Service via sc config

ATT&CK techniques

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

What it detects

This rule detects the sc command setting the WinRM service start type to disabled, an impair-defenses step observed in the Prometei intrusion. Disabling WinRM reduces remote management and logging capabilities that defenders rely on during response. While admins occasionally disable WinRM, doing so alongside other malware activity is a meaningful defense-evasion signal.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1685 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious netsh Firewall Rule Masquerading as SSTP HTTP

Suspicious Service binPath Hijack Followed by System Reboot

Malicious Windows Defender Root Exclusion via Add-MpPreference (via process_creation)

Suspicious Modification of Windows Hosts File

Malicious AMSI and ETW Bypass via In-Memory Patching (via ps_script)

Suspicious PowerShell AMSI or ETW Tampering

Malicious ABYSSWORKER EDR-Killer Driver Load via smuol.sys

Suspicious WMI Query Against Windows Defender Namespace via wmic (via process_creation)

Malicious Microsoft Defender Tampering via PowerShell Preference Cmdlets

Suspicious Disabling of WinRM Service via sc config

Pivot detection · T1685 · 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 →