Windows remote PowerShell session activity via wsmprovhost.exe process relationships

Alerts when wsmprovhost.exe is seen as a process or parent process, indicating remote PowerShell via WinRM.

FreeReviewedSigma · Medium · v1

Product: windows
Category: process_creation
Author: Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g (SigmaHQ), DRL 1.1
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2026-07-30

ATT&CK techniques

Execution → Lateral Movement

Recon
Resource Dev
Initial Access
Execution
- T1059.001PowerShell
Persistence
Priv Esc
Defense Evasion
Cred Access
Discovery
Lateral Movement
- T1021.006Windows Remote Management
Collection
C2
Exfiltration
Impact

What it detects

This rule flags process creation where wsmprovhost.exe appears either as the executing image or as the parent process image. wsmprovhost.exe is the WinRM host component used to support remote PowerShell sessions, so its presence in the process chain indicates an active remote PowerShell execution context. It relies on Windows process creation telemetry, specifically the image and parent image paths ending with wsmprovhost.exe.

Reporting behind it

Related detections9 linkedT1059.001 — drag to rearrange

Windows Remote PowerShell via PS Classic (wsmprovhost.exe, HostName=ServerRemoteHost)

Windows Remote PowerShell Session via PS Module ContextInfo and wsmprovhost.exe

WinRM Remote Access to LSASS via wsmprovhost.exe (Windows Process Access)

Suspicious Script Interpreter Spawned by Explorer via ClickFix Run Dialog (via process_creation)

Suspicious PowerShell Download Cradle via ClickFix Fake CAPTCHA (via process_creation)

Suspicious PowerShell EncodedCommand Spawned From Command Shell via Process Creation

Suspicious Script Download via Curl and PowerShell by Dohdoor

Malicious Mass Hyper-V Virtual Machine Shutdown via PowerShell by Kraken Ransomware

Suspicious PowerShell WebClient DownloadFile of Archive Payload (UAT-7237)

Windows remote PowerShell session activity via wsmprovhost.exe process relationships

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.

windows-remote-powershell-session-activity-via-wsmprovhost-exe-process-relations-734f8d9b

title: Windows remote PowerShell session activity via wsmprovhost.exe process relationships
id: bae07d31-c739-4bd2-a9e3-6ecb8adac3bf
status: test
description: This rule flags process creation where wsmprovhost.exe appears either as the executing image or as the parent process image. wsmprovhost.exe is the WinRM host component used to support remote PowerShell sessions, so its presence in the process chain indicates an active remote PowerShell execution context. It relies on Windows process creation telemetry, specifically the image and parent image paths ending with wsmprovhost.exe.
references:
  - https://threathunterplaybook.com/hunts/windows/190511-RemotePwshExecution/notebook.html
  - https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/master/rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_winrm_remote_powershell_session_process.yml
author: Roberto Rodriguez @Cyb3rWard0g, Huntrule Team
date: 2019-09-12
modified: 2022-10-09
tags:
  - attack.execution
  - attack.lateral-movement
  - attack.t1059.001
  - attack.t1021.006
logsource:
  category: process_creation
  product: windows
detection:
  selection:
    - Image|endswith: \wsmprovhost.exe
    - ParentImage|endswith: \wsmprovhost.exe
  condition: selection
falsepositives:
  - Legitimate usage of remote Powershell, e.g. for monitoring purposes.
level: medium
license: DRL-1.1
related:
  - id: 734f8d9b-42b8-41b2-bcf5-abaf49d5a3c8
    type: derived

Convert

This rule as a query you can run. Uses no unlock credit.

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