Suspicious Mshta Execution Of Remote HTA

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.exe executing an HTA hosted at a remote http or https URL. In the WithSecure Initial Access Lab 2 the Koadic stager is delivered as a remote HTA run directly by mshta. Attackers use mshta to fetch and run remote HTML applications as a proxy execution and download technique.

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 Mshta Execution Of Remote HTA

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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