Suspicious Office Application Spawning Interpreter via DDEAUTO (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1204.002Malicious File
- T1559.002Dynamic Data Exchange
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Microsoft Office applications spawning command shells or scripting interpreters, the hallmark of Dynamic Data Exchange DDEAUTO field abuse for code execution. Observed in Elastic Security Labs root cause analysis where winword.exe launches mshta, powershell, or cmd from a weaponized document to run attacker payloads.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1204.002 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Interpreter

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Suspicious WarzoneRAT Script Execution from Excel via Windows Script Host

Suspicious PowerShell Download Cradle Spawned from Explorer via ClickFix Lure (via process_creation)

Malicious Lunar Spider Loader Execution via rundll32 (via process_creation)

Suspicious HijackLoader Component Execution via ClearFake

Malicious Silent AteraAgent RMM Installation via IntegratorLogin

Suspicious Windows Script Host Execution of JavaScript from Temporary Archive Extraction Folder (via process_creation)

Suspicious Office Application Spawning Interpreter via DDEAUTO (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1204.002 · 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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