Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Interpreter

ATT&CK techniques

Execution

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

What it detects

This rule detects Microsoft Word or Excel spawning a script interpreter such as PowerShell or WScript. Revenge RAT uses a template-injected DOCX and a macro-laden XLSM to launch PowerShell and drop its VBScript loaders. Office applications spawning scripting engines is a classic macro or template-injection execution chain and rarely reflects legitimate document activity.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1204.002 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Executable Launched From ProgramData Root via Image Path (via process_creation)

Suspicious Shell Wrapper Execution from Trojanized macOS App Bundle (via process_creation)

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 PowerShell Launched by MSIX StartingScriptWrapper From WindowsApps via Process Creation (via process_creation)

Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Interpreter

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.

Full detection rule

Unlock this rule to view and copy it

The detection logic is included with a plan. Everything else — context, mappings and implementation details — stays free on this page.

Sign in for 3 free unlocks

Signing in gives you 3 unlocks to spend on any rule in the library. No card, and they do not expire.

Also included

Unlocked rules convert on this page — to Splunk SPL or Splunk — Raw Index SPL or Microsoft Sentinel KQL or Microsoft Sentinel ASIM ASIM KQL or Microsoft Defender XDR KQL or Elastic Security KQL or Elastic Security Lucene or Elastic Security ES|QL or CrowdStrike Falcon CQL or SentinelOne PowerQuery or Palo Alto Cortex XDR XQL or Carbon Black Cloud Platform Search or Carbon Black EDR Process Search or Google Security Operations UDM Search or IBM QRadar AQL or Sumo Logic Cloud SIEM Rules expression or Rapid7 InsightIDR LEQL or Graylog Search or OpenSearch Lucene or OpenSearch PPL PPL or Grafana Loki LogQL or SQLite SQL or Zircolite SQLite — with the log-source profile the engine picked, the field map it used, and everything it could not express. Converting a rule you have unlocked costs no further credit.

See it run on a free rule →Convert your own rule →