Elastic Security Detection Rules

Suspicious Portable Executable Encoded in Powershell Script

Last updated 9 months ago on 2025-03-20
Created 4 years ago on 2021-10-15

About

Detects the presence of a portable executable (PE) in a PowerShell script by looking for its encoded header. Attackers embed PEs into PowerShell scripts to inject them into memory, avoiding defences by not writing to disk.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: ExecutionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: PowerShell LogsLanguage: kuery
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Execution (TA0002)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

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

↳ Process Injection (T1055)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
Query (Kibana Query Language)
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
winlogbeat-*logs-windows.powershell*
Related Integrations

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

Query
text code block:
event.category:process and host.os.type:windows and
  powershell.file.script_block_text : (
    TVqQAAMAAAAEAAAA
  ) and not user.id : "S-1-5-18"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Suspicious Portable Executable Encoded in Powershell Script 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).