Suspicious Svchost Execution from Non-Services Parent

ATT&CK techniques

Priv Esc → Defense Evasion

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
- T1055Process Injection
Defense Evasion
- T1036Masquerading
- T1055Process Injection
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects svchost.exe launched by a parent other than services.exe which indicates process masquerading or code injection rather than a legitimate service host. During Crux ransomware activity a loader spawned svchost.exe with anomalous arguments to blend malicious execution into a trusted process name. Genuine svchost instances are always started by the Service Control Manager.

Reporting behind it

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Suspicious Svchost Execution from Non-Services Parent

Pivot detection · T1055 · 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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