Suspicious Process Spawned by WmiPrvSE for Remote Execution

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1047Windows Management Instrumentation
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.002SMB/Windows Admin Shares
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects command interpreters spawned by the WMI provider host WmiPrvSE which is the process ancestry produced by remote WMI command execution as described in the WithSecure lab. Remote WMI process creation is a fileless lateral movement technique so a shell or PowerShell child of WmiPrvSE frequently indicates an operator executing commands on a remote host.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1021.002 — drag to rearrange

Malicious WMIexec Style Command Output Redirection to Local Admin Share

Suspicious Impacket Style Command Execution with ADMIN Share Output Redirect

Suspicious WMIC Remote Process Creation for Lateral Movement

Suspicious Remote Process Creation and Admin Share Copy via WMIC and Xcopy

Malicious Impacket Wmiexec Remote Command Execution Pattern

Malicious Remote Process Creation via WMIC Node

Malicious Impacket WMIExec ADMIN Share Output Redirection

Suspicious Command Shell Spawned by WMI Provider Host Targeting ADMIN Share (via process_creation)

Malicious Remote Process Creation via wmic node call create

Suspicious Process Spawned by WmiPrvSE for Remote Execution

Pivot detection · T1021.002 · 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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