Sigma rule: Suspicious Child Process of SolarWinds WebHelpDesk
A detection rule from the SigmaHQ repository, shown as its author published it. Dataset version ref-64fe3899f9ca, updated 2026-02-11T00:00:00.000Z.
Rule
- Title
- Suspicious Child Process of SolarWinds WebHelpDesk
- Status
- experimental
- Level
- high
- Author
- Huntress Team, Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems)
- Date
- 2026-02-11
- File
- rules-emerging-threats/2025/Exploits/CVE-2025-40551/proc_creation_win_exploit_cve_2025_40551.yml
- Commit
- ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84
Detects suspicious child processes spawned by SolarWinds WebHelpDesk (WHD) application, which may indicate exploitation activity leveraging RCE vulnerabilities such as CVE-2025-40551, CVE-2025-40536, or CVE-2025-26399
Log source
- product
- windows
- category
- process_creation
Detection
selection_parent:
ParentImage|contains: '\WebHelpDesk\bin\'
ParentImage|endswith:
- '\java.exe'
- '\javaw.exe'
ParentCommandLine|contains: 'tomcat'
selection_suspicious_child:
CommandLine|contains:
- '-enc'
- 'base64'
- 'bitsadmin'
- 'certutil'
- 'curl'
- 'Invoke-RestMethod'
- 'Invoke-WebRequest'
- 'irm '
- 'iwr '
- 'mshta'
- 'msiexec'
- 'Net.WebClient'
- 'Start-BitsTransfer'
- 'wget'
- 'wmic'
condition: all of selection_*False positives (as the rule lists them)
- Unknown
Tags
- attack.initial-access
- attack.t1190
- cve.2025-26399
- cve.2025-40536
- cve.2025-40551
- detection.emerging-threats
CVEs this rule names
MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names
References
- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2026/02/06/active-exploitation-solarwinds-web-help-desk/
- https://www.huntress.com/blog/active-exploitation-solarwinds-web-help-desk-cve-2025-26399
- https://documentation.solarwinds.com/en/success_center/whd/content/release_notes/whd_2026-1_release_notes.htm
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/2025/Exploits/CVE-2025-40551/proc_creation_win_exploit_cve_2025_40551.yml
Sources and licences
SigmaHQ
"Suspicious Child Process of SolarWinds WebHelpDesk" by Huntress Team, Swachchhanda Shrawan Poudel (Nextron Systems) (SigmaHQ). Rule: https://github.com/SigmaHQ/sigma/blob/ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84/rules-emerging-threats/2025/Exploits/CVE-2025-40551/proc_creation_win_exploit_cve_2025_40551.yml.
Licensed under the Detection Rule License (DRL) 1.1: https://github.com/SigmaHQ/Detection-Rule-License
Cite this page
Dragons Eye Ransomware Tracker, "Sigma rule: Suspicious Child Process of SolarWinds WebHelpDesk",
entity page, dataset version ref-64fe3899f9ca, updated 2026-02-11T00:00:00.000Z,
https://ransomware-tracker.com/detections/sigma/8c7f4a2d-3b9e-4f1c-9a6d-2e8f5c3d9a1b (accessed 2026-11-03).
Underlying source: SigmaHQ rule 8c7f4a2d-3b9e-4f1c-9a6d-2e8f5c3d9a1b, commit ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84.
Pages change. The dataset version identifies the data, but no archive of old versions is kept, so this citation cannot be replayed later.