sigmahighHunting

Whoami.EXE Execution From Privileged Process

Detects the execution of "whoami.exe" by privileged accounts that are often abused by threat actors

MITRE ATT&CK

privilege-escalationdiscovery

Detection Query

selection_img:
  - OriginalFileName: whoami.exe
  - Image|endswith: \whoami.exe
selection_user:
  User|contains:
    - AUTHORI
    - AUTORI
    - TrustedInstaller
condition: all of selection_*

Author

Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Teymur Kheirkhabarov

Created

2022-01-28

Data Sources

windowsProcess Creation Events

Platforms

windows

References

Tags

attack.privilege-escalationattack.discoveryattack.t1033

Raw Content

title: Whoami.EXE Execution From Privileged Process
id: 79ce34ca-af29-4d0e-b832-fc1b377020db
related:
    - id: 80167ada-7a12-41ed-b8e9-aa47195c66a1
      type: obsolete
status: test
description: Detects the execution of "whoami.exe" by privileged accounts that are often abused by threat actors
references:
    - https://speakerdeck.com/heirhabarov/hunting-for-privilege-escalation-in-windows-environment
    - https://web.archive.org/web/20221019044836/https://nsudo.m2team.org/en-us/
author: Florian Roth (Nextron Systems), Teymur Kheirkhabarov
date: 2022-01-28
modified: 2023-12-04
tags:
    - attack.privilege-escalation
    - attack.discovery
    - attack.t1033
logsource:
    category: process_creation
    product: windows
detection:
    selection_img:
        - OriginalFileName: 'whoami.exe'
        - Image|endswith: '\whoami.exe'
    selection_user:
        User|contains:
            - 'AUTHORI'
            - 'AUTORI'
            - 'TrustedInstaller'
    condition: all of selection_*
falsepositives:
    - Unknown
level: high