1200kmSECURITY RESEARCH

1200KM / sigma-rule

Potential Process Injection Via Msra.EXE — Sigma Rule

Sigma rule 744a188b-0415-4792-896f-11ddb0588dbc. Potential Process Injection Via Msra.EXE — Sigma Rule. Detects potential process injection via Microsoft Remote Asssistance (Msra.exe) by looking at suspicious child processes spawned from the aforementioned process. It has been a target used by many threat actors and used for discovery and persistence tactics

Rule metadata and linked tags

Author: Alexander McDonald. Source status: test; severity: high. Source dates: 2022-06-24 / 2023-02-03.

{
  "category": "process_creation",
  "product": "windows"
}

Pinned original Sigma rule · Detection Rule License 1.1

Source SHA-256: bf0374a75e52d4dd6b415f009afc3c914132349ec17c99403b0dddab01245c1c

Detection logic

Original source YAML. Source-tag agreement is not proof of complete semantic coverage. This rule has not been compiled for a SIEM backend or validated against live telemetry here.

title: Potential Process Injection Via Msra.EXE
id: 744a188b-0415-4792-896f-11ddb0588dbc
status: test
description: Detects potential process injection via Microsoft Remote Asssistance (Msra.exe) by looking at suspicious child processes spawned from the aforementioned process. It has been a target used by many threat actors and used for discovery and persistence tactics
references:
    - https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2021/12/09/a-closer-look-at-qakbots-latest-building-blocks-and-how-to-knock-them-down/
    - https://www.fortinet.com/content/dam/fortinet/assets/analyst-reports/ar-qakbot.pdf
author: Alexander McDonald
date: 2022-06-24
modified: 2023-02-03
tags:
    - attack.privilege-escalation
    - attack.stealth
    - attack.t1055
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection:
        ParentImage|endswith: '\msra.exe'
        ParentCommandLine|endswith: 'msra.exe'
        Image|endswith:
            - '\arp.exe'
            - '\cmd.exe'
            - '\net.exe'
            - '\netstat.exe'
            - '\nslookup.exe'
            - '\route.exe'
            - '\schtasks.exe'
            - '\whoami.exe'
    condition: selection
falsepositives:
    - Legitimate use of Msra.exe
level: high

Original YAML and metadata in JSON

False positives

  • Legitimate use of Msra.exe

Source references

Connected ecosystem references

Exact source-tagged techniques

Telemetry review

Read the original logsource above, then inspect the linked detection workspaces for technique-level sensor context. No per-rule telemetry equivalence is inferred.

Pinned research references. No browser attack runner, live simulation result or validated detector is asserted. Source mappings and validation limits are preserved. ATT&CK / Atomic provenance · Detection provenance.