Suspicious Mshta Spawned From Explorer Command Chain

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1566.003Spearphishing via Service
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 spawning a command shell, a pattern seen in the Lazarus infection chain where Winword launches Explorer then Mshta then Cmd. In the WithSecure Catching Lazarus research this handoff proxies macro execution into a scripting stage. Attackers chain trusted binaries this way to break parent-child heuristics and continue the intrusion.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1218.005 — drag to rearrange

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Suspicious PowerShell Spawning mshta for Malware Execution (via process_creation)

Malicious Remote HTA Download and Execution via mshta by UAC-0050 (via process_creation)

Suspicious Mshta Spawned From Explorer Command Chain

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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