title: Suspect Svchost Activity
id: 16c37b52-b141-42a5-a3ea-bbe098444397
status: experimental
description: It is extremely abnormal for svchost.exe to spawn without any CLI arguments and is normally observed when a malicious process spawns the process and injects code into the process memory space.
references:
    - https://securitybytes.io/blue-team-fundamentals-part-two-windows-processes-759fe15965e2
author: David Burkett
date: 2019/12/28
modified: 2021/02/24
tags:
    - attack.defense_evasion
    - attack.privilege_escalation    
    - attack.t1055
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection1:
        CommandLine|endswith: 'svchost.exe' 
    selection2:
        Image|endswith: '\svchost.exe'
    filter:
        - ParentImage|endswith:
            - '\rpcnet.exe'
            - '\rpcnetp.exe'
        - CommandLine: null  # no CommandLine value available
    condition: (selection1 and selection2) and not filter
fields:
    - CommandLine
    - ParentCommandLine
falsepositives:
    - rpcnet.exe / rpcnetp.exe which is a lojack style software. https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-14/materials/us-14-Kamlyuk-Kamluk-Computrace-Backdoor-Revisited.pdf
level: critical