Network Connection via Mshtaedit

Identifies mshta.exe making a network connection. This may indicate adversarial activity as mshta.exe is often leveraged by adversaries to execute malicious scripts and evade detection.

Rule type: query

Rule indices:

  • winlogbeat-*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5 minutes

Searches indices from: now-6m (Date Math format, see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum signals per execution: 100

References:

Tags:

  • Elastic
  • Windows

Version: 2 (version history)

Added (Elastic Stack release): 7.6.0

Last modified (Elastic Stack release): 7.7.0

Rule queryedit

event.action:"Network connection detected (rule: NetworkConnect)" and
process.name:mshta.exe

Threat mappingedit

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Rule version historyedit

Version 2 (7.7.0 release)

Updated query, changed from:

event.action:"Network connection detected (rule: NetworkConnect)" and
process.name:"mshta.exe"