Local Service Commandsedit

Identifies use of sc.exe to create, modify, or start services on remote hosts. This could be indicative of adversary lateral movement but will be noisy if commonly done by admins.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • winlogbeat-*
  • logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-9m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Windows

Version: 4 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.6.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.9.1

Rule authors: Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License

Rule queryedit

event.category:process and event.type:(start or process_started) and
process.name:sc.exe and process.args:(config or create or failure or
start)

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 4 (7.9.1 release)
  • Formatting only
Version 3 (7.9.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.action:"Process Create (rule: ProcessCreate)" and
    process.name:sc.exe and process.args:(config or create or failure or
    start)
Version 2 (7.7.0 release)
  • Updated query, changed from:

    event.action:"Process Create (rule: ProcessCreate)" and
    process.name:sc.exe and process.args:("create" or "config" or
    "failure" or "start")