Suspicious PowerShell BITS Transfer of DLL Payload via process_creation

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-17
Updated
2026-09-17

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Persistence

  5. Priv Esc

  6. Defense Evasion

  7. Cred Access

  8. Discovery

  9. Lateral Movement

  10. Collection

  11. C2

  12. Exfiltration

  13. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects PowerShell using the BITS transfer cmdlet to download a DLL payload, matching the WARMCOOKIE backdoor delivery chain initiated from a malicious JavaScript file. The technique leverages the background intelligent transfer service to retrieve the loader while evading some download monitoring. A DLL fetched by Start-BitsTransfer through PowerShell is highly suspicious.

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Suspicious PowerShell Download Cradle Spawned from Explorer via ClickFix Lure (via process_creation)
Suspicious PowerShell BITS Transfer of DLL Payload via process_creation
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.