Suspicious Remote MSI Installation of RMM Tooling via Msiexec (via process_creation)

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → C2

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
- T1218.007Msiexec
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
- T1219Remote Access Tools
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects msiexec silently installing an MSI package hosted at a remote URL, a technique used after SolarWinds Web Help Desk exploitation to deploy remote monitoring and management tooling such as Velociraptor and cloudflared. Observed in Elastic Security Labs telemetry where quiet remote MSI installs establish attacker persistence and command channels.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1219 — drag to rearrange

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Malicious Msiexec Execution of Staged Update Package via Process Creation

Suspicious n8n Campaign RMM Installer Masquerading as OneDrive Document

Suspicious Velociraptor Agent Deployment via msiexec From Cloud Storage

Malicious Scheduled Task Masquerading as GoogleUpdate Launching SSH Reverse Shell

Malicious NetSupport RAT Client32 Execution

Suspicious Remote MSI Installation of RMM Tooling via Msiexec (via process_creation)

Pivot detection · T1219 · 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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