ATT&CK coverage › Technique

Trusted Developer Utilities Proxy Execution: MSBuild T1127.001

Adversaries may use MSBuild to proxy execution of code through a trusted Windows utility. MSBuild.exe (Microsoft Build Engine) is a software build platform used by Visual Studio. It handles XML formatted project files that define requirements for loading and building various platforms and configurations.

Events covered

3 catalog events are tagged with this technique by at least one rule.

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon3Network connection
Sysmon8CreateRemoteThread
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 3 rules above: which fields they filter on, what specific values they look for, and what they exclude. Field names are normalized across vendors so Sigma's Image, Elastic's process.name, and Splunk's process_name collapse into one row. Each rule contributes at most once per row.

Fields filtered most (5 distinct)

The fields most rules look at when detecting this technique. The How column shows the operators authors use (eq, wildcard, regex_match, match) and how often each appears. Sample values are concrete examples to start from, not an exhaustive list.

FieldRulesHowSample values
process_name1eq 1MSBuild.exe
Provider_Name1eq 1Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon
Image1ends_with 1\msbuild.exe
Initiated1eq 1true
DestinationPort1eq 180, 443

Top indicator values (6 distinct)

Specific (field, operator, value) combinations the rules check for, ranked by how many rules under this technique use each one. The Corpus reach column counts how many rules across the entire catalog (any technique) check the same combination. High numbers point to widely-used indicators that are likely noisy on their own; combine them with another condition for useful signal. Blank means the combination is specific to rules under this technique.

FieldKindValueRules (here)Corpus reach
Provider_NameeqMicrosoft-Windows-Sysmon13
process_nameeqMSBuild.exe1
Initiatedeqtrue140
DestinationPorteq44317
DestinationPorteq8016
Imageends_with\msbuild.exe17

Rules under this technique

Every rule in the catalog tagged with this technique, grouped by vendor. Click a rule title for its full predicates, exclusions, and indicators.

Sigma 1 rule

Elastic 1 rule

Kusto Query Language 1 rule