Suspicious HTA Download via mshta and Curl in Process Creation

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1218.005Mshta
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects mshta being used together with curl to fetch and execute a remote HTA payload, the ClickFix delivery chain attributed to Scarlet Goldfinch. Victims are socially engineered into pasting a command that downloads and runs the HTA, giving the attacker code execution through a signed Windows binary that bypasses application controls.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1218.005 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious HTA Payload Download and Execution via PowerShell One-Liner (via process_creation)

Suspicious RunMRU Entry Launching LOLBIN via ClickFix Run Dialog

Suspicious mshta Executing Remote Content via ClickFix Lure

Suspicious mshta Launched from Explorer via ClickFix Run Dialog (via process_creation)

Suspicious msdt Execution of Audio Diagnostic via UNC1069 ClickFix

Suspicious PowerShell Loader Spawned by mshta via UNC5142 ClickFix

Suspicious Script Interpreter Spawned by mshta

Suspicious HTA Download via mshta and Curl in Process Creation

Pivot detection · T1218.005 · 9 related

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

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