Suspicious Remote HTA Execution via mshta from File Sharing Site

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1218.005Mshta
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects mshta.exe fetching and executing a remote HTA file, including from the transfer.sh file sharing service as seen in this targeted phishing attack. Loading remote HTA payloads through the signed mshta binary is a proxy execution and defense evasion technique used here to stage an XWorm loader.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1218.005 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Copy of System mshta.exe into ProgramData by SideWinder APT

Malicious Renamed mshta.exe Execution by SideWinder APT

Suspicious MSHTA Execution Spawned by Browser or Document Reader via Mispadu (via process_creation)

Suspicious Office Application Spawning Mshta With Remote HTA

Suspicious MSHTA VBScript WScript Shell Execution

Suspicious Remote HTA Payload Execution via MSHTA

Malicious Shell Spawned by Mshta Delivery (via process_creation)

Malicious Kimsuky Remote HTA Execution via URL Shortener (via process_creation)

ClickFix Paste-Jacking Execution of mshta Retrieving Remote Payload (via process_creation)

Suspicious Remote HTA Execution via mshta from File Sharing Site

Pivot detection · T1218.005 · 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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