Windows: Alert on Suspicious Child Processes Spawned by provlaunch.exe
Detects provlaunch.exe launching suspicious child executables and processes from common temp/task paths on Windows.
- Product
- windows
- Category
- process_creation
- Author
- Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems) (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
- Published
- 2023-08-08
- Updated
- 2026-07-30
ATT&CK techniques
Defense EvasionRecon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact
What it detects
This rule flags when provlaunch.exe spawns specific child processes commonly abused for execution and scripting, including calc.exe, cmd.exe, cscript.exe, mshta.exe, notepad.exe, powershell.exe/pwsh.exe, regsvr32.exe, rundll32.exe, and wscript.exe. It also catches cases where the spawned process command path includes typical staging or task locations such as PerfLogs, Temp, Users\Public, AppData\Temp, and Windows\Tasks/Temp. This matters because attackers may use provlaunch.exe to proxy execution and move into more capable tooling or script interpreters, which is observable via process creation telemetry on Windows.
Reporting behind it
Detection content is published as a reviewed draft. Tune thresholds and exclusions against your own telemetry before enabling this rule for alerting.
title: "Windows: Alert on Suspicious Child Processes Spawned by provlaunch.exe"
id: a760d141-6b62-41f5-9d62-3988d8116e63
related:
- id: 7f5d1c9a-3e83-48df-95a7-2b98aae6c13c
type: similar
- id: 2a4b3e61-9d22-4e4a-b60f-6e8f0cde6f25
type: similar
- id: 7021255e-5db3-4946-a8b9-0ba7a4644a69
type: similar
- id: f9999590-1f94-4a34-a91e-951e47bedefd
type: derived
status: test
description: This rule flags when provlaunch.exe spawns specific child processes commonly abused for execution and scripting, including calc.exe, cmd.exe, cscript.exe, mshta.exe, notepad.exe, powershell.exe/pwsh.exe, regsvr32.exe, rundll32.exe, and wscript.exe. It also catches cases where the spawned process command path includes typical staging or task locations such as PerfLogs, Temp, Users\Public, AppData\Temp, and Windows\Tasks/Temp. This matters because attackers may use provlaunch.exe to proxy execution and move into more capable tooling or script interpreters, which is observable via process creation telemetry on Windows.
references:
- https://lolbas-project.github.io/lolbas/Binaries/Provlaunch/
- https://twitter.com/0gtweet/status/1674399582162153472
- https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_provlaunch_susp_child_process.yml
author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems), Huntrule Team
date: 2023-08-08
tags:
- attack.stealth
- attack.t1218
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection_parent:
ParentImage|endswith: \provlaunch.exe
selection_child:
- Image|endswith:
- \calc.exe
- \cmd.exe
- \cscript.exe
- \mshta.exe
- \notepad.exe
- \powershell.exe
- \pwsh.exe
- \regsvr32.exe
- \rundll32.exe
- \wscript.exe
- Image|contains:
- :\PerfLogs\
- :\Temp\
- :\Users\Public\
- \AppData\Temp\
- \Windows\System32\Tasks\
- \Windows\Tasks\
- \Windows\Temp\
condition: all of selection_*
falsepositives:
- Unknown
level: high
license: DRL-1.1