LoFP LoFP / legitimate administrative activities or monitoring tools might occasionally spawn command shells from sqlservr.exe. review the process command-line arguments and consider filtering out known legitimate processes or users.

Techniques

Sample rules

Windows Sqlservr Spawning Shell

Description

This analytic detects instances where the sqlservr.exe process spawns a command shell (cmd.exe) or PowerShell process. This behavior is often indicative of command execution initiated from within the SQL Server process, potentially due to exploitation of SQL injection vulnerabilities or the use of extended stored procedures like xp_cmdshell.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name="sqlservr.exe" `process_cmd` OR `process_powershell` 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)` 
| `windows_sqlservr_spawning_shell_filter`