Suspicious WSL Child Process Anomaly (via process_creation)

title: Suspicious WSL Child Process Anomaly (via process_creation)
id: 615f29b1-d87e-5241-bb31-6edff7afd995
status: stable
description: This rule detects uncommon or anomalous child processes spawning from a WSL process. This could indicate an attempt to evade parent/child relationship detections or persistence attempts via cron using WSL
references:
    - https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1202/
    - https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1218/
    - https://lolbas-project.github.io/lolbas/OtherMSBinaries/Wsl/
    - https://twitter.com/nas_bench/status/1535431474429808642
author: Huntrule Team
date: 2026-02-21
tags:
    - attack.execution
    - attack.stealth
    - attack.t1218
    - attack.t1202
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection_parent:
        ParentImage|endswith:
            - '\wsl.exe'
            - '\wslhost.exe'
    selection_children_images:
        Image|endswith:
            - '\calc.exe'
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\cscript.exe'
            - '\mshta.exe'
            - '\powershell.exe'
            - '\pwsh.exe'
            - '\regsvr32.exe'
            - '\rundll32.exe'
            - '\wscript.exe'
    selection_children_paths:
        Image|contains:
            - '\AppData\Local\Temp\'
            - 'C:\Users\Public\'
            - 'C:\Windows\Temp\'
            - 'C:\Temp\'
            - '\Downloads\'
            - '\Desktop\'
    condition: selection_parent and 1 of selection_children_*
falsepositives:
    - Unknown
level: medium