Sigma rule: Uncommon Child Process Of AddinUtil.EXE

Rule

Title

Uncommon Child Process Of AddinUtil.EXE

Status

test

Level

medium

Author

Michael McKinley (@McKinleyMike), Tony Latteri (@TheLatteri)

Date

2023-09-18

File

rules/windows/process_creation/proc_creation_win_addinutil_uncommon_child_process.yml

Commit

ccbb0369507f796db0b0ae6854c8a2be471b9d84

Detects uncommon child processes of the Add-In deployment cache updating utility (AddInutil.exe) which could be a sign of potential abuse of the binary to proxy execution via a custom Addins.Store payload.

Log source

product

windows

category

process_creation

Detection

selection:
    ParentImage|endswith: '\addinutil.exe'
filter_main_werfault:
    Image|endswith:
        - ':\Windows\System32\conhost.exe'
        - ':\Windows\System32\werfault.exe'
        - ':\Windows\SysWOW64\werfault.exe'
condition: selection and not 1 of filter_main_*

False positives (as the rule lists them)

• Unknown

Tags

• attack.stealth
• attack.t1218

MITRE ATT&CK ids this rule names

• T1218

References

• https://www.blue-prints.blog/content/blog/posts/lolbin/addinutil-lolbas.html

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_addinutil_uncommon_child_process.yml