Renamed PAExec Execution

Severity: high
Author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Jason Lynch
Source: upstream

Detects execution of renamed version of PAExec. Often used by attackers

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

Tactic	Techniques
Defense Evasion	`T1202` Indirect Command Execution

Event coverage

Provider	Event ID	Title
Sysmon	1	Process creation

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: `selection`

or:
Description: 'PAExec Application'
Hashes|contains: 'IMPHASH=11D40A7B7876288F919AB819CC2D9802'
Hashes|contains: 'IMPHASH=1a6cca4d5460b1710a12dea39e4a592c'
Hashes|contains: 'IMPHASH=6444f8a34e99b8f7d9647de66aabe516'
Hashes|contains: 'IMPHASH=dfd6aa3f7b2b1035b76b718f1ddc689f'
OriginalFileName: PAExec.exe
Product|contains: PAExec

Stage 2: `not 1 of filter_main_known_location`

or:
Image|endswith: '\paexec.exe'
Image|startswith: 'C:\Windows\PAExec-'

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
`Description`	eq	`PAExec Application`
`Hashes`	match	`IMPHASH=11D40A7B7876288F919AB819CC2D9802` `IMPHASH=1a6cca4d5460b1710a12dea39e4a592c` `IMPHASH=6444f8a34e99b8f7d9647de66aabe516` `IMPHASH=dfd6aa3f7b2b1035b76b718f1ddc689f`
`Image`	ends_with	`\paexec.exe`
`Image`	starts_with	`C:\Windows\PAExec-`
`OriginalFileName`	eq	`PAExec.exe`
`Product`	match	`PAExec`