Elastic Security Detection Rules

Suspicious Microsoft HTML Application Child Process

Last updated 24 days ago on 2025-08-19
Created 24 days ago on 2025-08-19

About

Identifies Mshta.exe spawning a suspicious child process. This may indicate adversarial activity, as Mshta is often leveraged by adversaries to execute malicious scripts and evade detection.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: Windows Security Event LogsData Source: Microsoft Defender for EndpointData Source: SysmonData Source: SentinelOneData Source: CrowdstrikeLanguage: eql
Severity
high
Risk Score
73
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ System Binary Proxy Execution (T1218)(opens in a new tab or window)

License
Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
endgame-*logs-crowdstrike.fdr*logs-endpoint.events.process-*logs-m365_defender.event-*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*logs-system.security*logs-windows.forwarded*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*winlogbeat-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

system(opens in a new tab or window)

m365_defender(opens in a new tab or window)

sentinel_one_cloud_funnel(opens in a new tab or window)

crowdstrike(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
 process.parent.name : "mshta.exe" and
 (
  process.name : ("cmd.exe", "powershell.exe", "certutil.exe", "bitsadmin.exe", "curl.exe", "msiexec.exe", "schtasks.exe", "reg.exe", "wscript.exe", "rundll32.exe") or
  process.executable : ("C:\\Users\\*\\*.exe", "\\Device\\HarddiskVolume*\\Users\\*\\*.exe")
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Suspicious Microsoft HTML Application Child Process in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).