Sigma rule: Forest Blizzard APT - Process Creation Activity

Rule

Title

Forest Blizzard APT - Process Creation Activity

Status

experimental

Level

high

Author

Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)

Date

2024-04-23

Modified

2025-01-22

File

rules-emerging-threats/2024/TA/Forest-Blizzard/proc_creation_win_apt_forest_blizzard_activity.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects the execution of specific processes and command line combination.
These were seen being created by Forest Blizzard as described by MSFT.

Log source

product

windows

category

process_creation

Detection

selection_hashes:
    Hashes|contains:
        - 'SHA256=6b311c0a977d21e772ac4e99762234da852bbf84293386fbe78622a96c0b052f'
        - 'SHA256=c60ead92cd376b689d1b4450f2578b36ea0bf64f3963cfa5546279fa4424c2a5'
selection_schtasks_create:
    Image|endswith: '\schtasks.exe'
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'Create'
        - '/RU'
        - 'SYSTEM'
        - '\Microsoft\Windows\WinSrv'
    CommandLine|contains:
        - 'servtask.bat'
        - 'execute.bat'
        - 'doit.bat'
selection_schtasks_delete:
    Image|endswith: '\schtasks.exe'
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'Delete'
        - '/F '
        - '\Microsoft\Windows\WinSrv'
selection_powershell:
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'Get-ChildItem'
        - '.save'
        - 'Compress-Archive -DestinationPath C:\ProgramData\'
condition: 1 of selection_*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Unknown

Tags

• attack.execution
• detection.emerging-threats
• attack.stealth

References

• https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/04/22/analyzing-forest-blizzards-custom-post-compromise-tool-for-exploiting-cve-2022-38028-to-obtain-credentials/

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules-emerging-threats/2024/TA/Forest-Blizzard/proc_creation_win_apt_forest_blizzard_activity.yml