huntrule

Windows PowerShell via sqltoolsps.exe (sqltoolsps.exe child process exclusion)

Flags suspicious sqltoolsps.exe executions that may launch PowerShell, excluding cases where smss.exe spawned the utility.

FreeReviewedSigma · Medium · v1
Product
windows
Category
process_creation
Author
Agro (@agro_sev) oscd.communitly (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published
2020-10-13
Updated
2026-07-30
AnalysisDetection

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Defense Evasion

  1. Recon

  2. Resource Dev

  3. Initial Access

  4. Execution

  5. Persistence

  6. Priv Esc

  7. Defense Evasion

  8. Cred Access

  9. Discovery

  10. Lateral Movement

  11. Collection

  12. C2

  13. Exfiltration

  14. Impact

What it detects

This rule identifies executions of sqltoolsps.exe where the process is started directly and is not created by smss.exe. Attackers can use sqltoolsps.exe as a PowerShell execution path, which may evade protections that depend on PowerShell script block logging. It relies on Windows process creation telemetry, matching the executable path and parent process relationships to determine the execution context.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059.001 — drag to rearrange
PowerShell Execution via sqlps.exe (Windows Process Creation)
Suspicious PowerShell Remote Download and Execution via Invoke-WebRequest
Suspicious Script Host Spawning Hidden PowerShell (via process_creation)
Suspicious PowerShell Reflective Assembly Load With GZip Decompression (via process_creation)
Suspicious PowerShell Invoke-Expression with Replace Obfuscation
Suspicious PowerShell Archive Extraction to AppData Roaming
Malicious PowerShell Spawned by Masqueraded NVIDIA GeForce Experience Binary
Suspicious PowerShell Hidden Unrestricted Execution via ClickFix
Suspicious PowerShell Spawned by cscript in Script Chain
Windows PowerShell via sqltoolsps.exe (sqltoolsps.exe child process exclusion)
Pivot detection · T1059.001 · 9 related

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