Interactive Logon by an Unusual Process

Last updated 3 months ago on 2025-03-20
Created 2 years ago on 2023-12-04

About

Identifies interactive logon attempt with alternate credentials and by an unusual process. Adversaries may create a new token to escalate privileges and bypass access controls.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Windows Security Event LogsLanguage: eql
Severity
high
Risk Score
73
MITRE ATT&CK™

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(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
logs-system.security*logs-windows.forwarded*winlogbeat-*
Related Integrations

system(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
authentication where
 host.os.type : "windows" and winlog.event_data.LogonProcessName : "Advapi*" and
 winlog.logon.type == "Interactive" and winlog.event_data.SubjectUserSid : ("S-1-5-21*", "S-1-12-*") and
 winlog.event_data.TargetUserSid : ("S-1-5-21*", "S-1-12-*")  and process.executable : "C:\\*" and
 not startswith~(winlog.event_data.SubjectUserSid, winlog.event_data.TargetUserSid) and
 not process.executable :
            ("?:\\Windows\\System32\\winlogon.exe",
             "?:\\Windows\\System32\\wininit.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files\\*.exe",
             "?:\\Program Files (x86)\\*.exe",
             "?:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\inetsrv\\w3wp.exe",
             "?:\\Windows\\System32\\inetsrv\\w3wp.exe",
             "?:\\Windows\\SysWOW64\\msiexec.exe")

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Interactive Logon by an Unusual 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).