ATT&CK coverage › Technique

User Execution T1204

An adversary may rely upon specific actions by a user in order to gain execution. Users may be subjected to social engineering to get them to execute malicious code by, for example, opening a malicious document file or link. These user actions will typically be observed as follow-on behavior from forms of Phishing.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon7Image loaded
Sysmon8CreateRemoteThread
Sysmon11FileCreate
Security-Auditing4663An attempt was made to access an object.
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.
Defender-DeviceEvents9007004CreateRemoteThread API call
Defender-DeviceFileEvents9002000File activity (any)
Defender-DeviceImageLoadEvents9006000Image load (any)

Authoring guide

Patterns shared across the 8 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 (7 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
CommandLine2match 2.SettingContent-ms, immersivecontrolpanel, \DavWWWRoot\
TargetFilename2match 2, ends_with 1.ps1, .exe, .hta, :\Users\, \deno\remote\https\
FileName1in 1mscorlib.ni.dll, mscorlib.dll, mscoree.dll
ActionType1in 1SetThreadContextRemoteApiCall, QueueUserApcRemoteApiCall, CreateRemoteThreadApiCall
InitiatingProcessFileName1in 1powerpnt.exe, winword.exe, excel.exe
Image1ends_with 1\pwsh.exe, \mshta.exe, \powershell.exe
ParentImage1ends_with 1\explorer.exe

Top indicator values (32 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
FileNameinmscorlib.ni.dll1
FileNameinmscorlib.dll1
FileNameinmscoree.dll1
ActionTypeinCreateRemoteThreadApiCall1
ActionTypeinSetThreadContextRemoteApiCall1
InitiatingProcessFileNameinwinword.exe1
InitiatingProcessFileNameinpowerpnt.exe1
InitiatingProcessFileNameinexcel.exe1
ActionTypeinQueueUserApcRemoteApiCall1
CommandLinematchimmersivecontrolpanel1
CommandLinematch.SettingContent-ms1
Imageends_with\wscript.exe164
Imageends_with\cscript.exe164
Imageends_with\powershell.exe1143
Imageends_with\cmd.exe192
Imageends_with\mshta.exe157
ParentImageends_with\explorer.exe111
CommandLinematch\DavWWWRoot\12
Imageends_with\pwsh.exe1140
TargetFilenamematch:\Users\Public\12

Common exclusions (6 distinct)

Field/operator/value combinations that rules under this technique routinely exclude (top-level not() clauses). These are the false-positive paths the community has learned to filter out. A new rule that ignores the high-count entries here will likely fire on the same noisy paths.

FieldKindValueRules excluding
CommandLinecontains/dde1
CommandLinematch.xlsx1
CommandLinematch.docx1
CommandLinematch.pptx1
CommandLinematchdotx1
CommandLinematch.xltx1

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 4 rules

Kusto Query Language 4 rules