Sigma rule: Potentially Suspicious Execution Of PDQDeployRunner

Rule

Title

Potentially Suspicious Execution Of PDQDeployRunner

Status

test

Level

medium

Author

Nasreddine Bencherchali (Nextron Systems)

Date

2022-07-22

Modified

2024-05-02

File

rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_pdqdeploy_runner_susp_children.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects suspicious execution of "PDQDeployRunner" which is part of the PDQDeploy service stack that is responsible for executing commands and packages on a remote machines

Log source

product

windows

category

process_creation

Detection

selection_parent:
    ParentImage|contains: '\PDQDeployRunner-'
selection_child:
    # Improve this section by adding other suspicious processes, commandlines or paths
    - Image|endswith:
          # If you use any of the following processes legitimately comment them out
          - '\bash.exe'
          - '\certutil.exe'
          - '\cmd.exe'
          - '\csc.exe'
          - '\cscript.exe'
          - '\dllhost.exe'
          - '\mshta.exe'
          - '\msiexec.exe'
          - '\regsvr32.exe'
          - '\rundll32.exe'
          - '\scriptrunner.exe'
          - '\wmic.exe'
          - '\wscript.exe'
          - '\wsl.exe'
    - Image|contains:
          - ':\ProgramData\'
          - ':\Users\Public\'
          - ':\Windows\TEMP\'
          - '\AppData\Local\Temp'
    - CommandLine|contains:
          - ' -decode '
          - ' -enc '
          - ' -encodedcommand '
          - ' -w hidden'
          - 'DownloadString'
          - 'FromBase64String'
          - 'http'
          - 'iex '
          - 'Invoke-'
condition: all of selection_*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Legitimate use of the PDQDeploy tool to execute these commands

Tags

• attack.execution

Related rules

• d679950c-abb7-43a6-80fb-2a480c4fc450 (similar)

References

• https://twitter.com/malmoeb/status/1550483085472432128

Read on 2026-11-03T00:58:21.399Z under licence sigma-drl-1.1@d5f4c36a from https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_pdqdeploy_runner_susp_children.yml