Suspicious Remote HTA Payload Execution via MSHTA

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1218.005Mshta
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1105Ingress Tool Transfer
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects mshta.exe launched with a remote http or https URL argument to retrieve and execute a remote HTML Application payload. Loaders such as CountLoader and Emmenhtal abuse this behavior to stage LummaStealer and other malware in memory.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Remote HTA Payload Execution via MSHTA

Pivot detection · T1105 · 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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