Detection: Windows SCCM Smsexec Spawned a Suspicious Child Process

Updated Date: 2026-08-24 ID: 72091a05-3008-4330-b43e-f5e070134ec1 Author: Raven Tait, Splunk Type: Anomaly Product: Splunk Enterprise Security

Description

The following analytic detects shells, scripting engines, and common post-exploitation utilities spawned as child processes of smsexec.exe. smsexec.exe is the core SCCM SMS Executive service process and has no legitimate reason to launch interactive shells or scripting interpreters. An attacker who plants a malicious adsource.dll in the SCCMProvider bin\X64 directory will obtain code execution in the SCCM service context, typically resulting in a SYSTEM-level child process being spawned under smsexec.exe. If confirmed malicious, this activity represents successful exploitation of the SCCM SMS Executive service and should be treated as a full host compromise.

Search

 1
 2| tstats `security_content_summariesonly`
 3  count min(_time) as firstTime
 4        max(_time) as lastTime
 5
 6from datamodel=Endpoint.Processes where
 7
 8Processes.parent_process_name="smsexec.exe"
 9Processes.process_name IN (
10    "bitsadmin.exe",
11    "certutil.exe",
12    "cmd.exe",
13    "conhost.exe",
14    "cscript.exe",
15    "curl.exe",
16    "mshta.exe",
17    "net.exe",
18    "net1.exe",
19    "powershell.exe",
20    "pwsh.exe",
21    "reg.exe",
22    "regsvr32.exe",
23    "rundll32.exe",
24    "wmic.exe",
25    "wscript.exe"
26)
27
28by Processes.action Processes.dest Processes.original_file_name
29   Processes.parent_process Processes.parent_process_exec
30   Processes.parent_process_guid Processes.parent_process_id
31   Processes.parent_process_name Processes.parent_process_path
32   Processes.process Processes.process_exec Processes.process_guid
33   Processes.process_hash Processes.process_id
34   Processes.process_integrity_level Processes.process_name
35   Processes.process_path Processes.user Processes.user_id
36   Processes.vendor_product
37
38
39| `drop_dm_object_name(Processes)`
40
41| `security_content_ctime(firstTime)`
42
43| `security_content_ctime(lastTime)`
44
45| `windows_sccm_smsexec_spawned_a_suspicious_child_process_filter`

Data Source

Name	Platform	Sourcetype	Source
Windows Event Log Security 4688	Windows	`'XmlWinEventLog'`	`'XmlWinEventLog:Security'`
Sysmon EventID 1	Windows	`'XmlWinEventLog'`	`'XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational'`
CrowdStrike ProcessRollup2	Other	`'crowdstrike:events:sensor'`	`'crowdstrike'`

Macros Used

Name	Value
security_content_summariesonly	`summariesonly=`summariesonly_config `allow_old_summaries=`oldsummaries_config `fillnull_value=`fillnull_config``
windows_sccm_smsexec_spawned_a_suspicious_child_process_filter	`search *`

windows_sccm_smsexec_spawned_a_suspicious_child_process_filter is an empty macro by default. It allows the user to filter out any results (false positives) without editing the SPL.

Annotations

- MITRE ATT&CK

+ Kill Chain Phases

+ NIST

+ CIS

- Threat Actors

ID	Technique	Tactic
T1068	Exploitation for Privilege Escalation	Privilege Escalation
T1574.001	DLL	Execution

Exploitation

Installation

DE.AE

CIS 10

CVE

CVE-2026-47301

Default Configuration

This detection is configured by default in Splunk Enterprise Security to run with the following settings:

Setting	Value
Disabled	true
Cron Schedule	`0 * * * *`
Earliest Time	`-70m@m`
Latest Time	`-10m@m`
Schedule Window	`auto`
Creates Finding (Notable)	No
Creates Intermediate Finding (Risk Event)	Yes

Anomaly detections generate Intermediate Findings (Risk Events). They do not generate a Finding (Notable) directly.

Implementation

The detection is based on data that originates from Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agents. These agents are designed to provide security-related telemetry from the endpoints where the agent is installed. To implement this search, you must ingest logs that contain the process GUID, process name, and parent process. Additionally, you must ingest complete command-line executions. These logs must be processed using the appropriate Splunk Technology Add-ons that are specific to the EDR product. The logs must also be mapped to the Processes node of the Endpoint data model. Use the Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) to normalize the field names and speed up the data modeling process.

Known False Positives

smsexec.exe is not expected to spawn interactive shells or scripting engines under normal operating conditions. False positives are unlikely. Validate the full command line and file hash of any match before tuning.

Associated Analytic Story

Windows Privilege Escalation

Intermediate Findings

Message	Entity Field	Entity Type	Risk Score
Suspicious child process [$process_name$] with Command Line [$process$] spawned by [$parent_process_path$] on [$dest$]	dest	system	50

Threat Objects

Field	Type
process	process
process_name	process_name

References

Detection Testing

Test Type	Status	Dataset	Source	Sourcetype
Validation	✅ Passing	N/A	N/A	N/A
Unit	✅ Passing	Dataset	`XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational`	`XmlWinEventLog`
Integration	✅ Passing	Dataset	`XmlWinEventLog:Microsoft-Windows-Sysmon/Operational`	`XmlWinEventLog`

Replay any dataset to Splunk Enterprise by using our replay.py tool or the UI. Alternatively you can replay a dataset into a Splunk Attack Range

Source: GitHub |

Version: 1