Suspicious Service Creation With Auto Start via process_creation

PremiumReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
HuntRule
Published
2026-08-13
Updated
2026-08-28

ATT&CK techniques

Persistence → Priv Esc
  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Defense Evasion

  6. Cred Access

  7. Discovery

  8. Lateral Movement

  9. Collection

  10. C2

  11. Exfiltration

  12. Impact

What it detects

This rule detects use of sc.exe to create a new auto-start service which is a common persistence mechanism for miners and loaders. SilentCryptoMiner registered a service named to mimic the Windows Image Acquisition driver with an automatic start binary path. Alerting on service creation from sc.exe surfaces persistence attempts that survive reboots.

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Malicious Service Permissions Hijacked for Privileges Abuse - Reg via Command (via process_creation)
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Suspicious PSexec Service Installation (via security)
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Suspicious Service Creation With Auto Start via process_creation
Pivot detection · T1543.003 · 9 related

Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.