windows update or other windows installer processes may launch their own svchost.exe processes that are not directly spawned by services.exe in certain edge cases (e.g., during patches or updates).

Techniques

T1036.009

Sample rules

Windows Svchost.exe Parent Process Anomaly

source: splunk
technicques:
- T1036.009

Description

The following analytic detects an anomaly where an svchost.exe process is spawned by a parent process other than the standard services.exe. In a typical Windows environment, svchost.exe is a system process that hosts Windows service DLLs, and is expected to be a child of services.exe. A process deviation from this hierarchy may indicate suspicious behavior, such as malicious code attempting to masquerade as a legitimate system process or evade detection. It is essential to investigate the parent process and associated behavior for further signs of compromise or unauthorized activity.

Detection logic


| tstats `security_content_summariesonly` count min(_time) as firstTime max(_time) as lastTime from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where Processes.parent_process_name != "services.exe" AND Processes.process_name = "svchost.exe" AND Processes.process != unknown AND Processes.parent_process_path != "C:\\ProgramData\\Microsoft\\Windows Defender\\Platform\\*\\MsMpEng.exe" AND Processes.parent_process_path != "C:\\Program Files\\Windows Defender\\MsMpEng.exe" by Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process_path Processes.parent_process Processes.process_path Processes.process Processes.original_file_name Processes.dest Processes.user 
| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)` 
| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)` 
| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)` 
| `windows_svchost_exe_parent_process_anomaly_filter`