Microsoft Office Process Spawning a Suspicious One-Liner

Cortex XDR Analytics Alert Reference by data source

Product
Cortex XDR
Last date published
2024-12-03
Category
Analytics Alert Reference
Order
data source

Synopsis

Activation Period

14 Days

Training Period

30 Days

Test Period

N/A (single event)

Deduplication Period

1 Day

Required Data

  • Requires:
    • XDR Agent

Detection Modules

Detector Tags

ATT&CK Tactic

ATT&CK Technique

Severity

Medium

Description

A Microsoft Office process spawned a commonly abused process with a full command (not a script), this is a typically malicious behavior.

Attacker's Goals

An attacker is trying to gain code execution on the host.

Investigative actions

Check whether the command line executed is benign or normal for the host and/or user performing it. For example, employees working in finance may have legitimate use cases for complex Excel commands.