Detection rules › Sigma
Potential Lateral Movement via Windows Remote Shell
Detects a child process spawned by 'winrshost.exe', which suggests remote command execution through Windows Remote Shell (WinRs) and may indicate potential lateral movement activity.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Lateral Movement | T1021.006 Remote Services: Windows Remote Management |
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Sysmon | Event ID 1 | Process creation |
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
title: Potential Lateral Movement via Windows Remote Shell
id: 79df3f68-dccb-48e9-9171-b75cbc37c51d
status: experimental
description: |
Detects a child process spawned by 'winrshost.exe', which suggests remote command execution through Windows Remote Shell (WinRs) and may indicate potential lateral movement activity.
references:
- https://cardinalops.com/blog/living-off-winrm-abusing-complexity-in-remote-management/
- https://www.ired.team/offensive-security/lateral-movement/winrs-for-lateral-movement
author: Liran Ravich
date: 2025-10-22
tags:
- attack.lateral-movement
- attack.t1021.006
logsource:
category: process_creation
product: windows
detection:
selection:
# Note: Example of command to simulate (winrm needs to be enabled): "c:\Windows\System32\winrs.exe" powershell
ParentImage|endswith: '\winrshost.exe'
filter_main_conhost:
Image: 'C:\Windows\System32\conhost.exe'
condition: selection and not 1 of filter_main_*
falsepositives:
- Legitimate use of WinRM within the organization
level: medium
Stages and Predicates
Stage 0: condition
selection and not 1 of filter_main_*Stage 1: selection
selection:
ParentImage|endswith: '\winrshost.exe'
Stage 2: not filter_main_conhost
filter_main_conhost:
Image: 'C:\Windows\System32\conhost.exe'
Exclusions
Top-level NOT(...) conjuncts: predicates this rule actively suppresses.
| Field | Kind | Excluded values |
|---|---|---|
Image | eq | C:\Windows\System32\conhost.exe |
Indicators
Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.
| Field | Kind | Values |
|---|---|---|
ParentImage | ends_with |
|