New Service Creation Using Sc.EXE

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

Detects the creation of a new service using the "sc.exe" utility.

Known false positives

Legitimate administrator or user creates a service for legitimate reasons.
Software installation

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Persistence	`T1543.003` Create or Modify System Process: Windows Service
Privilege Escalation	`T1543.003` Create or Modify System Process: Windows Service

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 1: Process creation
Security-Auditing	Event ID 4688: A new process has been created.

Rule body

title: New Service Creation Using Sc.EXE
id: 85ff530b-261d-48c6-a441-facaa2e81e48
related:
    - id: c02e96b7-c63a-4c47-bd83-4a9f74afcfb2 # Using PowerShell
      type: similar
status: test
description: Detects the creation of a new service using the "sc.exe" utility.
references:
    - https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/f339e7da7d05f6057fdfcdd3742bfcf365fee2a9/atomics/T1543.003/T1543.003.md
author: Timur Zinniatullin, Daniil Yugoslavskiy, oscd.community
date: 2023-02-20
modified: 2025-09-01
tags:
    - attack.persistence
    - attack.privilege-escalation
    - attack.t1543.003
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        Image|endswith: '\sc.exe'
        CommandLine|contains|all:
            - 'create'
            - 'binPath'
    filter_optional_dropbox:
        ParentImage|startswith:
            - 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\'
            - 'C:\Program Files\Dropbox\Client\'
        ParentImage|endswith: '\Dropbox.exe'
    condition: selection and not 1 of filter_optional_*
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate administrator or user creates a service for legitimate reasons.
    - Software installation
level: low

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

selection and not 1 of filter_optional_*

Stage 1: `selection`

selection:
    Image|endswith: '\sc.exe'
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'create'
        - 'binPath'

Stage 2: `not filter_optional_dropbox`

filter_optional_dropbox:
    ParentImage|startswith:
        - 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\'
        - 'C:\Program Files\Dropbox\Client\'
    ParentImage|endswith: '\Dropbox.exe'

Exclusions

The rule actively suppresses these predicates.

Field	Kind	Excluded values	Search
`ParentImage`	starts_with	`C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\`	`excludes:ParentImage` `field:"ParentImage" value:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\"`
`ParentImage`	starts_with	`C:\Program Files\Dropbox\Client\`	`excludes:ParentImage` `field:"ParentImage" value:"C:\Program Files\Dropbox\Client\"`
`ParentImage`	ends_with	`\Dropbox.exe`	`excludes:ParentImage` `field:"ParentImage" value:"\Dropbox.exe"`

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`CommandLine`	match	`binPath` corpus 6 (sigma 5, splunk 1) `create` corpus 29 (sigma 17, splunk 7, elastic 5)	`field:"CommandLine" kind:match`
`Image`	ends_with	`\sc.exe` corpus 30 (sigma 30)	`field:"Image" kind:ends_with value:"\sc.exe"`

New Service Creation Using Sc.EXE

Known false positives

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Telemetry coverage

Rule body

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: condition

Stage 1: selection

Stage 2: not filter_optional_dropbox

Exclusions

Indicators

Stage 0: `condition`

Stage 1: `selection`

Stage 2: `not filter_optional_dropbox`