Elastic Security Detection Rules

Bitsadmin Activity

Last updated 3 months ago on 2025-03-20
Created 2 years ago on 2023-08-21

About

Windows Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS) is a low-bandwidth, asynchronous file transfer mechanism. Adversaries may abuse BITS to persist, download, execute, and even clean up after running malicious code.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Command and ControlData Source: Elastic DefendRule Type: BBRData Source: SysmonData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: Windows Security Event LogsLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

Command and Control (TA0011)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

↳ BITS Jobs (T1197)(opens in a new tab or window)

Persistence (TA0003)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ BITS Jobs (T1197)(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-endpoint.events.process-*logs-system.security*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)

Query
process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
  (
   (process.name : "bitsadmin.exe" and process.args : (
        "*Transfer*", "*Create*", "AddFile", "*SetNotifyFlags*", "*SetNotifyCmdLine*",
        "*SetMinRetryDelay*", "*SetCustomHeaders*", "*Resume*")
   ) or
   (process.name : "powershell.exe" and process.args : (
        "*Start-BitsTransfer*", "*Add-BitsFile*",
        "*Resume-BitsTransfer*", "*Set-BitsTransfer*", "*BITS.Manager*")
   )
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Bitsadmin Activity 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).