Office Application Spawns a Script Interpreter
highWindowsSingle eventexperimentalsigma.office_spawns_interpreter · v1.0.0
What it detects
Word/Excel/PowerPoint spawning a shell or scripting host — macro execution
MITRE ATT&CK mapping
- T1566.001Phishing: Spearphishing Attachment· Initial Access
False positives and triage
Converted from Sigma; review before enabling.
The rule
Declarative YAML read by the detection engine — data, never executed. Confidence 70%. Source: rules/sigma/sigma.office_spawns_interpreter.yaml, licensed under the Detection Rule License 1.1.
id: sigma.office_spawns_interpreter
version: 1.0.0
status: experimental
severity: high
confidence: 0.7
platforms:
- windows
mitre_techniques:
- T1566.001
description: Word/Excel/PowerPoint spawning a shell or scripting host — macro execution (Sigma sample)
match:
event_category: process
parent_process_name_contains_any:
- winword.exe
- excel.exe
- powerpnt.exe
process_path_contains_any:
- \powershell.exe
- \cmd.exe
- \wscript.exe
- \cscript.exe
- \mshta.exe
false_positive_guidance: Converted from Sigma; review before enabling.
Adapted from the SigmaHQ rule “Office Application Spawns a Script Interpreter”, distributed under the Detection Rule License 1.1. SigmaHQ.
Related detections
Run this rule on your own logs — offline
KIROSEC runs this rule and the rest of the library over Windows, Linux, macOS and cloud audit logs on the analyst's own machine. Every alert links to the events that raised it, and nothing leaves the device.