name: Possible Lateral Movement PowerShell Spawn
id: cb909b3e-512b-11ec-aa31-3e22fbd008af
version: 1
date: '2021-11-29'
author: Mauricio Velazco, Splunk
status: production
type: TTP
description: The following analytic assists with identifying a PowerShell process
  spawned as a child or grand child process of commonly abused processes during lateral
  movement techniques including `services.exe`, `wmiprsve.exe`, `svchost.exe`, `wsmprovhost.exe`
  and `mmc.exe`. Legitimate Windows features such as the Service Control Manager,
  Windows Management Instrumentation, Task Scheduler, Windows Remote Management and
  the DCOM protocol can be abused to start a process on a remote endpoint. Looking
  for PowerShell spawned out of this processes may reveal a lateral movement attack.
  Red Teams and adversaries alike may abuse these services during a breach for lateral
  movement and remote code execution.
data_source:
- Sysmon Event ID 1
search:
  selection1:
    ParentImage:
    - mmc.exe
    - wsmprovhost.exe
    - svchost.exe
    - services.exe
    - wmiprvse.exe
  selection2:
    CommandLine: '*powershell.exe*'
    Image|endswith:
    - cmd.exe
    - powershell.exe
    - pwsh.exe
  selection3:
    CommandLine: '*pwsh.exe*'
    Image|endswith: cmd.exe
  condition: (selection1) and selection2 and selection3
how_to_implement: To successfully implement this search, you need to be ingesting
  logs with the process name, parent process, and command-line executions from your
  endpoints.
known_false_positives: Legitimate applications may spawn PowerShell as a child process
  of the the identified processes. Filter as needed.
references:
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1021/003/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1021/006/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1047/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1053/005/
- https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1543/003/
tags:
  analytic_story:
  - Hermetic Wiper
  - Active Directory Lateral Movement
  - Malicious PowerShell
  asset_type: Endpoint
  confidence: 50
  impact: 90
  message: A PowerShell process was spawned as a child process of typically abused
    processes on $dest$
  mitre_attack_id:
  - T1021
  - T1021.003
  - T1021.006
  - T1047
  - T1053.005
  - T1543.003
  - T1059.001
  - T1218.014
  observable:
  - name: dest
    type: Endpoint
    role:
    - Victim
  product:
  - Splunk Enterprise
  - Splunk Enterprise Security
  - Splunk Cloud
  risk_score: 45
  security_domain: endpoint
tests:
- name: True Positive Test
  attack_data:
  - data: https://media.githubusercontent.com/media/splunk/attack_data/master/datasets/attack_techniques/T1543.003/lateral_movement_powershell/windows-sysmon.log
    source: XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational
    sourcetype: xmlwineventlog