ATT&CK coverage › Technique

User Execution: Malicious Link T1204.001

An adversary may rely upon a user clicking a malicious link in order to gain execution. Users may be subjected to social engineering to get them to click on a link that will lead to code execution. This user action will typically be observed as follow-on behavior from Spearphishing Link. Clicking on a link may also lead to other execution techniques such as exploitation of a browser or application vulnerability via Exploitation for Client Execution. Links may also lead users to download files that require execution via Malicious File.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon11FileCreate
Sysmon13RegistryEvent (Value Set)
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 (6 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
Details1match 1https://, account, validation
TargetObject1match 1\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU\
CommandLine1match 1fraud, anti-bot, botcheck
ParentImage1ends_with 1\explorer.exe
file_name1in 1"*.vhd.lnk", "*.iso.lnk", "*vhdx.lnk"
TargetFilename1eq 1"*\\Microsoft\\Windows\\Recent\\*"

Top indicator values (55 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
Detailsmatch%comspec%12
Detailsmatchbotcheck12
Detailsmatchschtasks12
Detailsmatchcscript14
Detailsmatchchallenge12
Detailsmatchcurl12
Detailsmatchrobot12
Detailsmatchaccount12
Detailsmatchhuman12
Detailsmatchbitsadmin12
Detailsmatchrundll3214
Detailsmatchwscript14
Detailsmatchhttp://1
Detailsmatchpwsh14
Detailsmatchpowershell18
Detailsmatchfinger12
Detailsmatchhttps://1
Detailsmatchcertutil12
Detailsmatchmshta14
Detailsmatchcaptcha12

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 2 rules

Splunk 1 rule