ATT&CK coverage › Technique

System Binary Proxy Execution: MMC T1218.014

Adversaries may abuse mmc.exe to proxy execution of malicious .msc files. Microsoft Management Console (MMC) is a binary that may be signed by Microsoft and is used in several ways in either its GUI or in a command prompt. MMC can be used to create, open, and save custom consoles that contain administrative tools created by Microsoft, called snap-ins. These snap-ins may be used to manage Windows systems locally or remotely. MMC can also be used to open Microsoft created .msc files to manage system configuration.

Events covered

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

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Sysmon7Image loaded

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 (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
Image3ends_with 2, eq 1\mmc.exe, "*\\mmc.exe"
ImageLoaded2ends_with 1, eq 1\jscript.dll, \vbscript.dll, \jscript9.dll, "*.dll"
OriginalFileName1eq 1MMC.exe
CommandLine1match 1tdo.msc, fdp.msc, slx.msc
Company1ne 1"Microsoft Corporation"
Signed1eq 1false
EventID1eq 17

Top indicator values (19 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
Imageends_with\mmc.exe26
CommandLinematchlmth.msc1
CommandLinematchxtpp.msc1
CommandLinematchslx.msc1
CommandLinematchxslx.msc1
CommandLinematchxcod.msc1
CommandLinematchftr.msc1
CommandLinematchfdp.msc1
OriginalFileNameeqMMC.exe12
CommandLinematchcod.msc1
CommandLinematchtdo.msc1
ImageLoadedends_with\jscript9.dll1
ImageLoadedends_with\vbscript.dll13
ImageLoadedends_with\jscript.dll12
EventIDeq7135
ImageLoadedeq"*.dll"13
Imageeq"*\\mmc.exe"1
Companyne"Microsoft Corporation"1
Signedeqfalse18

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