Detection rules › Sigma

Suspect Svchost Activity

Severity
high
Author
David Burkett, @signalblur
Source
upstream

It is extremely abnormal for svchost.exe to spawn without any CLI arguments and is normally observed when a malicious process spawns the process and injects code into the process memory space.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Privilege EscalationT1055 Process Injection
Defense EvasionT1055 Process Injection

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation
Security-Auditing4688A new process has been created.

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: selection

CommandLine|endswith: svchost.exe
Image|endswith: '\svchost.exe'

Stage 2: not filter

or:
CommandLine: null
ParentImage|endswith: '\rpcnet.exe'
ParentImage|endswith: '\rpcnetp.exe'

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.

FieldKindValues
CommandLineends_with
  • svchost.exe
Imageends_with
  • \svchost.exe corpus 20 (sigma 20)
ParentImageends_with
  • \rpcnet.exe corpus 2 (sigma 2)
  • \rpcnetp.exe

Neighbors

Broader alternatives (more inclusive than this rule)

These rules match a superset of what this rule catches. They cover the same events plus more. Use them if you want wider coverage and can absorb more false positives.