Potential WMI Lateral Movement WmiPrvSE Spawned PowerShell

Status: stable
Severity: medium
Log source: category process_creation, product windows
Author: Markus Neis @Karneades
Source: github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma

Detects Powershell as a child of the WmiPrvSE process. Which could be a sign of lateral movement via WMI.

Known false positives

AppvClient
CCM
WinRM

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Execution	`T1047` Windows Management Instrumentation `T1059.001` Command and Scripting Interpreter: PowerShell

Telemetry coverage

Provider	Record / event type
Sysmon	Event ID 1: Process creation

Rule body

title: Potential WMI Lateral Movement WmiPrvSE Spawned PowerShell
id: 692f0bec-83ba-4d04-af7e-e884a96059b6
related:
    - id: 8a582fe2-0882-4b89-a82a-da6b2dc32937
      type: similar
    - id: d21374ff-f574-44a7-9998-4a8c8bf33d7d
      type: similar
status: stable
description: Detects Powershell as a child of the WmiPrvSE process. Which could be a sign of lateral movement via WMI.
references:
    - https://any.run/report/68bc255f9b0db6a0d30a8f2dadfbee3256acfe12497bf93943bc1eab0735e45e/a2385d6f-34f7-403c-90d3-b1f9d2a90a5e
author: Markus Neis @Karneades
date: 2019-04-03
modified: 2023-03-29
tags:
    - attack.execution
    - attack.t1047
    - attack.t1059.001
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection_parent:
        ParentImage|endswith: '\WmiPrvSE.exe'
    selection_img:
        - Image|endswith:
              - '\powershell.exe'
              - '\pwsh.exe'
        - OriginalFileName:
              - 'PowerShell.EXE'
              - 'pwsh.dll'
    condition: all of selection_*
falsepositives:
    - AppvClient
    - CCM
    - WinRM
level: medium

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: `condition`

all of selection_*

Stage 1: `selection_parent`

selection_parent:
    ParentImage|endswith: '\WmiPrvSE.exe'

Stage 2: `selection_img`

selection_img:
    - Image|endswith:
          - '\powershell.exe'
          - '\pwsh.exe'
    - OriginalFileName:
          - 'PowerShell.EXE'
          - 'pwsh.dll'

Indicators

These rows show field, operator, and value matches.

Field	Kind	Values	Search
`Image`	ends_with	`\powershell.exe` corpus 179 (sigma 178, kusto 1) `\pwsh.exe` corpus 165 (sigma 164, kusto 1)	`field:"Image" kind:ends_with`
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`PowerShell.EXE` corpus 138 (sigma 84, splunk 30, elastic 24) `pwsh.dll` corpus 112 (sigma 79, splunk 30, elastic 3)	`field:"OriginalFileName" kind:eq`
`ParentImage`	ends_with	`\WmiPrvSE.exe` corpus 8 (sigma 8)	`field:"ParentImage" kind:ends_with value:"\WmiPrvSE.exe"`

Potential WMI Lateral Movement WmiPrvSE Spawned PowerShell

Known false positives

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Telemetry coverage

Rule body

Stages and Predicates

Stage 0: condition

Stage 1: selection_parent

Stage 2: selection_img

Indicators

Stage 0: `condition`

Stage 1: `selection_parent`

Stage 2: `selection_img`