Suspicious Msiexec Quiet Install From Remote Location

Severity: medium
Author: Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)
Source: upstream

Detects usage of Msiexec.exe to install packages hosted remotely quietly

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Defense Evasion	`T1218.007` System Binary Proxy Execution: Msiexec

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	1	Process creation

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `all of selection_img`

or:
Image|endswith: '\msiexec.exe'
OriginalFileName: msiexec.exe

Stage 2: `all of selection_cli`

or:
CommandLine|contains: -a
CommandLine|contains: -i
CommandLine|contains: -j
CommandLine|contains: -package

Stage 3: `all of selection_quiet`

CommandLine|contains: -q

Stage 4: `all of selection_remote`

or:
CommandLine|contains: '\\\\'
CommandLine|contains: http

Stage 5: `not 1 of filter_optional_openoffice`

CommandLine|contains: 'Installation Files\openoffice'
CommandLine|contains: '\AppData\Local\Temp\OpenOffice'

Indicators

Each row is a field, operator, and value that the rule matches. The corpus column counts how many other rules in the catalog look for the same combination: high numbers point to widely-used, community-vetted indicators. Blank or 1 shows that the indicator is specific to this rule.

Field	Kind	Values
`CommandLine`	match	`-a` corpus 4 (sigma 4) `-i` corpus 6 (sigma 6) `-j` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `-package` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `-q` corpus 2 (sigma 2) `Installation Files\openoffice` `\AppData\Local\Temp\OpenOffice` `\\\\` corpus 7 (sigma 7) `http` corpus 31 (sigma 31)
`Image`	ends_with	`\msiexec.exe` corpus 21 (sigma 21)
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`msiexec.exe` corpus 5 (sigma 5)

Suspicious Msiexec Quiet Install From Remote Location

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Event coverage

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: all of selection_img

Stage 2: all of selection_cli

Stage 3: all of selection_quiet