Suspicious WMIC Remote Process Creation for Lateral Movement

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1047Windows Management Instrumentation
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.002SMB/Windows Admin Shares
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule detects use of wmic with the /node switch to spawn processes on remote hosts, a lateral movement technique observed in Quantum ransomware intrusions alongside PsExec and C$ share abuse. Adversaries leverage WMI process call create to run payloads remotely without dropping additional tooling. Legitimate administrative WMI usage exists, so context and target frequency should be reviewed.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1021.002 — drag to rearrange

Suspicious Remote Process Creation and Admin Share Copy via WMIC and Xcopy

Malicious Impacket Wmiexec Remote Command Execution Pattern

Malicious Remote Process Creation via WMIC Node

Malicious Impacket WMIExec ADMIN Share Output Redirection

Suspicious Command Shell Spawned by WMI Provider Host Targeting ADMIN Share (via process_creation)

Malicious Remote Process Creation via wmic node call create

Malicious Impacket wmiexec Output Redirection via ADMIN Share

Windows WMI DLL Hijack via Network-placed wbemcomn.dll in System32\wbem

Windows WMIPRVSE DLL Hijack via Network-Created wbemcomn.dll in System32\wbem

Suspicious WMIC Remote Process Creation for Lateral Movement

Pivot detection · T1021.002 · 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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