Suspicious Obfuscated PowerShell Spawned by explorer via Run Dialog

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.001PowerShell
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects powershell launched directly by explorer with obfuscation indicators which matches the paste and run or ClickFix technique used by Mocha Manakin to trick users into pasting a malicious command into the Run dialog. This user driven execution delivers a NodeJS backdoor while bypassing many download based defenses. Detecting explorer spawned obfuscated PowerShell surfaces the initial foothold.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious PowerShell Download Cradle via IEX and DownloadString (via process_creation)

Suspicious Obfuscated PowerShell Spawned by explorer via Run Dialog

Pivot detection · T1059.001 · 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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