Detection rules › Splunk
Live Sysinternals Execution (Windows Event Log)
Sysinternals utilities are a suite of advanced system utilities aimed at managing, troubleshooting, and diagnosing Windows systems and applications. The live version of Sysinternals, available from https://live.sysinternals.com, enables users to run the tools without having to first download and install them locally. Threat actors may leverage these tools for system reconnaissance, privilege escalation, or to facilitate lateral movement within a network. This use case detects command line invocations of live.sysinternals.com, indicating potential attempts to execute Sysinternals tools without installation.
MITRE ATT&CK coverage
| Tactic | Techniques |
|---|---|
| Command & Control | T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer |
References
Event coverage
| Provider | Event | Title |
|---|---|---|
| Security-Auditing | Event ID 4688 | A new process has been created. |
Rule body yaml
id: '30750.54907'
title: Live Sysinternals Execution
description: Sysinternals utilities are a suite of advanced system utilities aimed
at managing, troubleshooting, and diagnosing Windows systems and applications. The
live version of Sysinternals, available from https://live.sysinternals.com, enables
users to run the tools without having to first download and install them locally.
Threat actors may leverage these tools for system reconnaissance, privilege escalation,
or to facilitate lateral movement within a network. This use case detects command
line invocations of live.sysinternals.com, indicating potential attempts to execute
Sysinternals tools without installation.
logic_format: Splunk
logic: '`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR
"<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) "live.sysinternals.com" | regex process="(?i)live\.sysinternals\.com"
| table _time, host, user, process, parent_process_name | bin span=1s | stats values(*)
as * by _time, host '
techniques:
- command-and-control:ingress tool transfer
technique_id:
- T1105
data_category:
- Process command-line parameters
- Windows event logs
references:
- https://live.sysinternals.com/
- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/
Stages and Predicates
Stage 1: search
`get_endpoint_data` `get_endpoint_data_winevent` (TERM(EventCode=4688) OR "<EventID>4688<" OR Type=Process) "live.sysinternals.com"
Stage 2: regex
| regex process="(?i)live\.sysinternals\.com"
Stage 3: table
| table _time, host, user, process, parent_process_name
Stage 4: bucket
| bin span=1s
Stage 5: stats
| stats values(*) as * by _time, host
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.
Search terms
Bare-string tokens in the SPL search body. Splunk matches each token against _raw (the untyped raw event text) anywhere it appears, not against a specific field. These don't surface in the Indicators table because they aren't predicates on a known field.
| Stage | Term |
|---|---|
| 1 | TERM |
| 1 | "<EventID>4688<" |
| 1 | "live.sysinternals.com" |