Suspicious MOVEit w3wp Child Process Execution via process_creation

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-07-23
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Persistence
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Execution

  4. Priv Esc

  5. Defense Evasion

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects the MOVEit Transfer IIS worker process w3wp.exe spawning command interpreters, which is the expected behavior when a dropped ASPX web shell is executed. During CVE-2023-34362 exploitation the attacker used the web shell under w3wp to run follow-on commands, so interpreter children of this worker are a strong web exploitation signal.

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Suspicious MOVEit w3wp Child Process Execution via process_creation
Pivot detection · T1190 · 9 related

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