Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Interpreter

ATT&CK techniques

Initial Access → Execution

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
- T1566.001Spearphishing Attachment
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects Microsoft Office applications launching PowerShell, WScript, CScript or WMIC, the phishing-payload execution chain highlighted in this threat hunt. A document or spreadsheet spawning a scripting engine indicates the user enabled malicious macro content. Office products have no routine need to invoke these interpreters.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059.001 — drag to rearrange

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Windows: Alert on Suspicious HH.EXE Process Execution

Malicious Office Application Spawning Command Interpreter

Suspicious Microsoft Word Spawning PowerShell

Malicious Office Application Spawning PowerShell with Encoded Command

Suspicious Node Package Install Spawning Script Interpreters via process_creation

Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Interpreter

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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