Techniques
Sample rules
Windows WinDBG Spawning AutoIt3
- source: splunk
- technicques:
- T1059
Description
The following analytic identifies instances of the WinDBG process spawning AutoIt3. This behavior is detected by monitoring endpoint telemetry for processes where ‘windbg.exe’ is the parent process and ‘autoit3.exe’ or similar is the child process. This activity is significant because AutoIt3 is frequently used by threat actors for scripting malicious automation, potentially indicating an ongoing attack. If confirmed malicious, this could allow attackers to automate tasks, execute arbitrary code, and further compromise the system, leading to data exfiltration or additional malware deployment.
Detection logic
| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name=windbg.exe AND (Processes.process_name IN ("autoit3.exe", "autoit*.exe") OR Processes.original_file_name IN ("autoit3.exe", "autoit*.exe")) by Processes.action Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_exec Processes.parent_process_guid Processes.parent_process_id Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process_path Processes.process Processes.process_exec Processes.process_guid Processes.process_hash Processes.process_id Processes.process_integrity_level Processes.process_name Processes.process_path Processes.user Processes.user_id Processes.vendor_product
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
| eval matches_extension=if(match(process, "\\.(au3
|a3x
|exe
|aut
|aup)$"), "Yes", "No")
| search matches_extension="Yes"
| `windows_windbg_spawning_autoit3_filter`