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

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-09-18
Updated
2026-09-18

ATT&CK techniques

Defense Evasion → C2
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. Exfiltration

  13. 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.

Related detections9 linkedT1219 — drag to rearrange
Malicious ScreenConnect Client Installation via Msiexec (via process_creation)
Malicious AnyDesk Unattended Silent Install and Password Set for Remote Access (via process_creation)
Suspicious Cloudflared Tunnel Persistence Installed via msiexec (via process_creation)
Suspicious AnyDesk Silent Install With Unattended Password
Suspicious Remote MSI Package Installation via msiexec (via process_creation)
Suspicious AnyDesk Unattended Access Configuration via Command Line (via process_creation)
Suspicious NetSupport client32 Persistence via Run Key from ProgramData
Suspicious Remote MSI Installation over WebDAV (via process_creation)
Suspicious Atera Agent Silent Onboarding via Process Creation
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.