Detection rules › Sigma

Suspicious Process Masquerading As SvcHost.EXE

Severity
high
Author
Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel
Source
upstream

Detects a suspicious process that is masquerading as the legitimate "svchost.exe" by naming its binary "svchost.exe" and executing from an uncommon location. Adversaries often disguise their malicious binaries by naming them after legitimate system processes like "svchost.exe" to evade detection.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
Defense EvasionT1036.005 Masquerading: Match Legitimate Resource Name or Location

Event coverage

ProviderEvent IDTitle
Sysmon1Process creation

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: selection

Image|endswith: '\svchost.exe'

Stage 2: not 1 of filter_main_*

or:
Image: 'C:\Windows\SysWOW64\svchost.exe'
Image: 'C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe'
OriginalFileName: svchost.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
Imageends_with
  • \svchost.exe corpus 20 (sigma 20)
Imageeq
  • C:\Windows\SysWOW64\svchost.exe corpus 3 (sigma 3)
  • C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe corpus 4 (sigma 4)
OriginalFileNameeq
  • svchost.exe