Detection: Possible Lateral Movement PowerShell Spawn

Description

The following analytic detects the spawning of a PowerShell process as a child or grandchild of commonly abused processes like services.exe, wmiprvse.exe, svchost.exe, wsmprovhost.exe, and mmc.exe. It leverages data from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents, focusing on process and parent process names, as well as command-line executions. This activity is significant as it could indicates lateral movement or remote code execution attempts by adversaries. If confirmed malicious, this behavior could allow attackers to execute code remotely, escalate privileges, or persist within the environment.

Search

 1
 2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly`
 3count min(_time) as firstTime
 4      max(_time) as lastTime
 5from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where
 6
 7(
 8    Processes.parent_process_name IN (
 9        "mmc.exe",
10        "services.exe",
11        "wmiprvse.exe",
12        "wsmprovhost.exe"
13    )
14    OR
15    (
16        Processes.parent_process_name="svchost.exe"
17        ```
18        We exclude the "Schedule" service from the svchost.exe process. But since there are instances where its not hosted in a dedicated svchost process, we need to the hosting group "netsvcs" too
19        ```
20        NOT Processes.parent_process IN (
21            "*-k netsvcs*",
22            "*-s Schedule*",
23        )
24    )
25)
26AND
27(
28    Processes.process_name IN ("powershell.exe", "pwsh.exe")
29    OR
30    (
31        Processes.process_name=cmd.exe
32        Processes.process IN (
33            "*powershell*",
34            "*pwsh*"
35        )
36    )
37)
38NOT Processes.process IN ("*C:\\Windows\\CCM\\*")
39
40by Processes.action Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name
41   Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_exec
42   Processes.parent_process_guid Processes.parent_process_id
43   Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process_path
44   Processes.process Processes.process_exec Processes.process_guid
45   Processes.process_hash Processes.process_id Processes.process_integrity_level
46   Processes.process_name Processes.process_path Processes.user
47   Processes.user_id Processes.vendor_product
48
49
50| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
51
52| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
53
54| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
55
56| `possible_lateral_movement_powershell_spawn_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
CrowdStrike ProcessRollup2	Other	'crowdstrike:events:sensor'	'crowdstrike'
Sysmon EventID 1	Windows	'XmlWinEventLog'	'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational'

Macros Used

Annotations

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Implementation

The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the Processes node of the Endpoint data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process.

Known False Positives

False positives are expected from legitimate use of WMI or certain services. Apply additoinal filters as needed.

Associated Analytic Story

• Active Directory Lateral Movement

• CISA AA24-241A

• Data Destruction

• Hermetic Wiper

• Malicious PowerShell

• Microsoft WSUS CVE-2025-59287

• Scheduled Tasks

Risk Based Analytics (RBA)

Risk Message:

A PowerShell process was spawned as a child process of typically abused processes on $dest$

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/

Detection Testing

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub | Version: 14