Incoming DCOM Lateral Movement with ShellBrowserWindow or ShellWindows

Last updated 9 months ago on 2025-03-20

Created 5 years ago on 2020-11-06

About

Identifies use of Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) to run commands from a remote host, which are launched via the ShellBrowserWindow or ShellWindows Application COM Object. This behavior may indicate an attacker abusing a DCOM application to stealthily move laterally.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Lateral MovementData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: SysmonLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Lateral Movement (TA0008)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Remote Services (T1021)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

License

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

Definition

Rule Type

Event Correlation Rule

Integration Pack

Prebuilt Security Detection Rules

Index Patterns

winlogbeat-*logs-endpoint.events.process-*logs-endpoint.events.network-*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*

Related Integrations

endpoint(external, opens in a new tab or window)

windows(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗sequence by host.id with maxspan=5s
 [network where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and process.name : "explorer.exe" and
  network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress") and network.transport == "tcp" and
  source.port > 49151 and destination.port > 49151 and source.ip != "127.0.0.1" and source.ip != "::1"
 ] by process.entity_id
 [process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and
  process.parent.name : "explorer.exe"
 ] by process.parent.entity_id

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Incoming DCOM Lateral Movement with ShellBrowserWindow or ShellWindows 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(external, opens in a new tab or window).