Compress-Archive Cmdlet Execution

Status: test
Severity: low
Log source: category ps_script, product windows
Author: Timur Zinniatullin, oscd.community
Source: github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects PowerShell scripts that make use of the "Compress-Archive" cmdlet in order to compress folders and files. An adversary might compress data (e.g., sensitive documents) that is collected prior to exfiltration in order to make it portable and minimize the amount of data sent over the network.

Known false positives

Likely

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Collection	`T1560` Archive Collected Data

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
PowerShell	Event ID 4104: Creating Scriptblock text (MessageNumber of MessageTotal).

Rule body

title: Compress-Archive Cmdlet Execution
id: 6dc5d284-69ea-42cf-9311-fb1c3932a69a
status: test
description: |
    Detects PowerShell scripts that make use of the "Compress-Archive" cmdlet in order to compress folders and files.
    An adversary might compress data (e.g., sensitive documents) that is collected prior to exfiltration in order to make it portable and minimize the amount of data sent over the network.
references:
    - https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/f339e7da7d05f6057fdfcdd3742bfcf365fee2a9/atomics/T1560/T1560.md
author: Timur Zinniatullin, oscd.community
date: 2019-10-21
modified: 2023-12-15
tags:
    - attack.exfiltration
    - attack.collection
    - attack.t1560
    - detection.threat-hunting
logsource:
    product: windows
    category: ps_script
    definition: 'Requirements: Script Block Logging must be enabled'
detection:
    selection:
        ScriptBlockText|contains: 'Compress-Archive'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Likely
level: low

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

selection

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    ScriptBlockText|contains: 'Compress-Archive'

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`ScriptBlockText`	match	`Compress-Archive` corpus 2 (sigma 1, splunk 1)	`field:"ScriptBlockText" kind:match value:"Compress-Archive"`