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Suspicious Process Parents

Sigma Rules

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Summary
This detection rule aims to identify suspicious parent processes in a Windows environment that exhibit abnormal behavior in process creation. Typically, certain parent processes should not spawn any child processes or should only have very limited and specific child processes. The rule specifically targets instances where the parent process names end with either 'minesweeper.exe', 'winver.exe', or 'bitsadmin.exe', which could indicate malintent, particularly in the context of evading detection mechanisms. Moreover, it includes a 'special' selection of additional parent processes that are often associated with legitimate operations but can also be exploited for malicious activity, such as 'csrss.exe' and 'certutil.exe'. The rule has a filter mechanism that checks for well-known system processes to refine the detection and minimize false positives. If any parent process in the criteria creates a child process that is not part of the filtered processes, the activity will be flagged as suspicious. This rule is crucial for monitoring process relationships and gaining insights into potential active exploitation or lateral movements within the Windows operating environment.
Categories
  • Endpoint
  • Windows
Data Sources
  • Process
Created: 2022-03-21