Detection rules › Sigma

Uncommon Userinit Child Process

Severity
high
Author
Tom Ueltschi (@c_APT_ure), Tim Shelton
Source
upstream

Detects uncommon "userinit.exe" child processes, which could be a sign of uncommon shells or login scripts used for persistence.

MITRE ATT&CK coverage

TacticTechniques
PersistenceT1037.001 Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts: Logon Script (Windows)
Privilege EscalationT1037.001 Boot or Logon Initialization Scripts: Logon Script (Windows)

Event coverage

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

Stages and Predicates

Stage 1: selection

ParentImage|endswith: '\userinit.exe'

Stage 2: not 1 of filter_main_explorer

Image|endswith: ':\WINDOWS\explorer.exe'

Stage 3: not 1 of filter_optional_*

or:
CommandLine: PowerShell.exe
CommandLine|contains: UsrLogon.cmd
CommandLine|contains: netlogon.bat
Image|endswith: ':\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\HDX\bin\cmstart.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\HDX\bin\icast.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\System32\icast.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Program Files\Citrix\HDX\bin\cmstart.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Program Files\Citrix\HDX\bin\icast.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Program Files\Citrix\System32\icast.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Windows\SysWOW64\proquota.exe'
Image|endswith: ':\Windows\System32\proquota.exe'
Image: null

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
CommandLineeq
  • PowerShell.exe
CommandLinematch
  • UsrLogon.cmd
  • netlogon.bat
Imageends_with
  • :\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\HDX\bin\cmstart.exe
  • :\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\HDX\bin\icast.exe
  • :\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\System32\icast.exe
  • :\Program Files\Citrix\HDX\bin\cmstart.exe
  • :\Program Files\Citrix\HDX\bin\icast.exe
  • :\Program Files\Citrix\System32\icast.exe
  • :\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
  • :\Windows\SysWOW64\proquota.exe
  • :\Windows\System32\proquota.exe
ParentImageends_with
  • \userinit.exe corpus 3 (sigma 3)