Service Execution

What the technique is

Adversaries may abuse the Windows service control manager to execute malicious commands or payloads. The Windows service control manager (services.exe) is an interface to manage and manipulate services. The service control manager is accessible to users via GUI components as well as system utilities such as sc.exe and Net. PsExec can also be used to execute commands or payloads via a temporary Windows service created through the service control manager API. Tools such as PsExec and sc.exe can accept remote servers as arguments and may be used to conduct remote execution. Adversaries may leverage these mechanisms to execute malicious content. This can be done by either executing a new or modified service. This technique is the execution used in conjunction with Windows Service during service persistence or privilege escalation.

What MITRE says you would watch

• AN1185

  Detection focuses on abnormal service executions initiated via service control manager APIs, sc.exe, net.exe, or PsExec creating temporary services. Defenders observe process creation of services.exe spawning non-standard binaries, registry changes in service keys followed by rapid execution, and network connections originating from processes tied to transient services. Correlation across process lineage, registry activity, and service logs provides strong signals of malicious service execution.