WMI Incoming Lateral Movement

Last updated 9 days ago on 2025-02-22
Created 4 years ago on 2020-11-15

About

Identifies processes executed via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) on a remote host. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement, but could be noisy if administrators use WMI to remotely manage hosts.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Lateral MovementData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: SysmonLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

Execution (TA0002)(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-*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by host.id with maxspan = 2s

 /* Accepted Incoming RPC connection by Winmgmt service */

  [network where host.os.type == "windows" and process.name : "svchost.exe" and network.direction : ("incoming", "ingress") and
   source.ip != "127.0.0.1" and source.ip != "::1" and source.port >= 49152 and destination.port >= 49152
  ]

  /* Excluding Common FPs Nessus and SCCM */

  [process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and process.parent.name : "WmiPrvSE.exe" and
   not (?process.Ext.token.integrity_level_name : "System" or ?winlog.event_data.IntegrityLevel : "System") and
   not (
         user.id : ("S-1-5-18", "S-1-5-19", "S-1-5-20") and
         /* Don't apply the user.id exclusion to Sysmon for compatibility */
         not event.dataset : ("windows.sysmon_operational", "windows.sysmon")
   ) and
   not process.executable :
               ("?:\\Program Files\\HPWBEM\\Tools\\hpsum_swdiscovery.exe",
                "?:\\Windows\\CCM\\Ccm32BitLauncher.exe",
                "?:\\Windows\\System32\\wbem\\mofcomp.exe",
                "?:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework*\\csc.exe",
                "?:\\Windows\\System32\\powercfg.exe") and
   not (process.executable : "?:\\Windows\\System32\\msiexec.exe" and process.args : "REBOOT=ReallySuppress") and
   not (process.executable : "?:\\Windows\\System32\\inetsrv\\appcmd.exe" and process.args : "uninstall")
   ]

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect WMI Incoming Lateral Movement 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).