Suspicious WMI Image Load from MS Officeedit

Identifies a suspicious image load (wmiutils.dll) from Microsoft Office processes. This behavior may indicate adversarial activity where child processes are spawned via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This technique can be used to execute code and evade traditional parent/child processes spawned from Microsoft Office products.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

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

Severity: low

Risk score: 21

Runs every: 5m

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

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Host
  • Windows
  • Threat Detection
  • Execution
  • Elastic Endgame

Version: 101

Rule authors:

  • Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guideedit


Rule queryedit

any where
 (event.category : ("library", "driver") or (event.category == "process" and event.action : "Image loaded*")) and
  process.name : ("WINWORD.EXE", "EXCEL.EXE", "POWERPNT.EXE", "MSPUB.EXE", "MSACCESS.EXE") and
  (dll.name : "wmiutils.dll" or file.name : "wmiutils.dll")

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM