InstallUtil Process Making Network Connections

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-20
Created 5 years ago on 2020-09-02

About

Identifies InstallUtil.exe making outbound network connections. This may indicate adversarial activity as InstallUtil is often leveraged by adversaries to execute code and evade detection.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: SysmonLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(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-endpoint.events.process-*logs-endpoint.events.network-*winlogbeat-*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
/* the benefit of doing this as an eql sequence vs kql is this will limit to alerting only on the first network connection */

sequence by process.entity_id
  [process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and process.name : "installutil.exe"]
  [network where host.os.type == "windows" and process.name : "installutil.exe" and network.direction : ("outgoing", "egress")]

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect InstallUtil Process Making Network Connections 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).