Sigma rule: Process Creation Attempt via Wmic.EXE

Rule

Title

Process Creation Attempt via Wmic.EXE

Status

test

Level

medium

Author

Michael Haag, Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), juju4, oscd.community

Date

2019-01-16

Modified

2023-02-14

File

rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_wmic_process_creation.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects the attempt to create a process via "wmic" with the "process call create" flag, which might
indicate an attempt to execute a malicious process on the compromised host. Adversaries may use
wmic to execute a process on the compromised host as part of their attack. This event is triggered on
on attempt and process creation can be either successful or unsuccessful.

Log source

product

windows

category

process_creation

Detection

selection_img:
    - Image|endswith: '\wmic.exe'
    - OriginalFileName: 'wmic.exe'
selection_cli:
    CommandLine|contains|all:
        - 'process'
        - 'call'
        - 'create'
condition: all of selection_*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Unknown

Tags

• attack.execution
• attack.t1047
• car.2016-03-002

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1047

Related rules

• 3c89a1e8-0fba-449e-8f1b-8409d6267ec8 (derived)

References

• https://www.sans.org/blog/wmic-for-incident-response/
• https://github.com/redcanaryco/atomic-red-team/blob/84215139ee5127f8e3a117e063b604812bd71928/atomics/T1047/T1047.md#atomic-test-5---wmi-execute-local-process

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_wmic_process_creation.yml