Suspicious Misspelled WMIC Binary Execution Associated With Volt Typhoon

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1047Windows Management Instrumentation
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects execution of a binary named wminc.exe, a misspelled masquerade of the legitimate wmic.exe tied to Volt Typhoon living-off-the-land tradecraft. The deliberately mistyped name is an anomalous constant that legitimate software does not produce, so any execution is highly suspicious and worth immediate triage.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1047 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Impacket WMIExec Command Execution Pattern Linked to Salt Typhoon

Suspicious Remote Process Creation via WMIC in BlackSuit Ransomware

Suspicious Process Creation via wmic Call Create

Suspicious Process Creation via WMIC Process Call Create

Malicious Remote Process Creation via WMI Win32_Process

Suspicious WMI Provider Host Spawning Explorer or wlrmdr via Process Creation

Suspicious Remote Process Creation and Admin Share Copy via WMIC and Xcopy

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

Lateral Movement via WMIC Remote Process Creation

Suspicious Misspelled WMIC Binary Execution Associated With Volt Typhoon

Pivot detection · T1047 · 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 →