Suspicious Head Mare srvhost.exe Masquerading as System Service Host

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-10-07
Updated
2026-10-07

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects execution of srvhost.exe, a filename Head Mare uses to masquerade its Sliver implant and helper binaries as the legitimate Windows svchost service host. Because no genuine Windows component is named srvhost.exe, its execution is a reliable indicator of the group's tooling.

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Suspicious Head Mare srvhost.exe Masquerading as System Service Host
Pivot detection · T1036.005 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.