Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Or Shell Interpreter

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.005Visual Basic
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1055Process Injection
Defense Evasion
- T1055Process Injection
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects a Microsoft Office application spawning a command shell or scripting interpreter. MacroPack-generated maldocs used VBA to launch child interpreters that injected and executed offensive-tool loaders such as Havoc and Brute Ratel. Office applications spawning cmd powershell wscript or rundll32 is a strong macro-abuse signal for the initial execution stage of an intrusion.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Office Application Spawning Script Or Shell Interpreter

Pivot detection · T1055 · 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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