Whoami Process Activity

  1[metadata]
  2creation_date = "2020/02/18"
  3integration = ["endpoint", "system", "windows", "m365_defender"]
  4maturity = "production"
  5updated_date = "2026/05/04"
  6
  7[rule]
  8author = ["Elastic"]
  9description = """
 10Identifies suspicious use of whoami.exe which displays user, group, and privileges information for the user who is
 11currently logged on to the local system.
 12"""
 13false_positives = [
 14    """
 15    Some normal use of this program, at varying levels of frequency, may originate from scripts, automation tools and
 16    frameworks. Usage by non-engineers and ordinary users is unusual.
 17    """,
 18]
 19from = "now-9m"
 20index = [
 21    "endgame-*",
 22    "logs-endpoint.events.process-*",
 23    "logs-m365_defender.event-*",
 24    "logs-system.security*",
 25    "logs-windows.forwarded*",
 26    "logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*",
 27    "winlogbeat-*",
 28]
 29language = "eql"
 30license = "Elastic License v2"
 31name = "Whoami Process Activity"
 32note = """## Triage and analysis
 33
 34### Investigating Whoami Process Activity
 35
 36After successfully compromising an environment, attackers may try to gain situational awareness to plan their next steps. This can happen by running commands to enumerate network resources, users, connections, files, and installed security software.
 37
 38This rule looks for the execution of the `whoami` utility. Attackers commonly use this utility to measure their current privileges, discover the current user, determine if a privilege escalation was successful, etc.
 39
 40#### Possible investigation steps
 41
 42- Investigate the process execution chain (parent process tree) for unknown processes. Examine their executable files for prevalence, whether they are located in expected locations, and if they are signed with valid digital signatures.
 43- Identify the user account that performed the action and whether it should perform this kind of action.
 44- Investigate other alerts associated with the user/host during the past 48 hours.
 45- Investigate any abnormal account behavior, such as command executions, file creations or modifications, and network connections.
 46
 47### False positive analysis
 48
 49- Discovery activities are not inherently malicious if they occur in isolation. As long as the analyst did not identify suspicious activity related to the user or host, such alerts can be dismissed.
 50
 51### Related rules
 52
 53- Account Discovery Command via SYSTEM Account - 2856446a-34e6-435b-9fb5-f8f040bfa7ed
 54
 55### Response and remediation
 56
 57- Initiate the incident response process based on the outcome of the triage.
 58- Isolate the involved hosts to prevent further post-compromise behavior.
 59- Investigate credential exposure on systems compromised or used by the attacker to ensure all compromised accounts are identified. Reset passwords for these accounts and other potentially compromised credentials, such as email, business systems, and web services.
 60- Run a full antimalware scan. This may reveal additional artifacts left in the system, persistence mechanisms, and malware components.
 61- Determine the initial vector abused by the attacker and take action to prevent reinfection through the same vector.
 62- Using the incident response data, update logging and audit policies to improve the mean time to detect (MTTD) and the mean time to respond (MTTR).
 63"""
 64
 65setup = """## Setup
 66
 67This rule is designed for data generated by [Elastic Defend](https://www.elastic.co/security/endpoint-security), which provides native endpoint detection and response, along with event enrichments designed to work with our detection rules.
 68
 69Setup instructions: https://ela.st/install-elastic-defend
 70
 71### Additional data sources
 72
 73This rule also supports the following third-party data sources. For setup instructions, refer to the links below:
 74
 75- [Microsoft Defender XDR](https://ela.st/m365-defender)
 76- [Sysmon Event ID 1 - Process Creation](https://ela.st/sysmon-event-1-setup)
 77- [Windows Process Creation Logs](https://ela.st/audit-process-creation)
 78"""
 79
 80risk_score = 21
 81rule_id = "ef862985-3f13-4262-a686-5f357bbb9bc2"
 82severity = "low"
 83tags = [
 84    "Domain: Endpoint",
 85    "OS: Windows",
 86    "Use Case: Threat Detection",
 87    "Tactic: Discovery",
 88    "Resources: Investigation Guide",
 89    "Data Source: Elastic Endgame",
 90    "Data Source: Elastic Defend",
 91    "Data Source: Microsoft Defender XDR",
 92    "Data Source: Sysmon",
 93    "Data Source: Windows Security Event Logs",
 94]
 95timestamp_override = "event.ingested"
 96type = "eql"
 97
 98query = '''
 99process where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "start" and process.name : "whoami.exe" and
100(
101  (
102    /* scoped for whoami execution under system privileges */
103    (
104      (
105        user.domain : ("NT *", "* NT", "IIS APPPOOL") and
106        user.id : ("S-1-5-18", "S-1-5-19", "S-1-5-20", "S-1-5-82-*") and
107        not ?winlog.event_data.SubjectUserName : "*$" and
108
109        /* Sysmon will always populate user.id as S-1-5-18, leading to FPs */
110        not data_stream.dataset : ("windows.sysmon_operational", "windows.sysmon")
111      ) or
112      (?process.Ext.token.integrity_level_name : "System" or ?winlog.event_data.IntegrityLevel : "System")
113    ) and
114    not (
115      process.parent.name : "cmd.exe" and
116      process.parent.args : (
117          "chcp 437>nul 2>&1 & C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\whoami.exe  /groups",
118          "chcp 437>nul 2>&1 & %systemroot%\\system32\\whoami /user",
119          "C:\\WINDOWS\\System32\\whoami.exe /groups",
120          "*WINDOWS\\system32\\config\\systemprofile*"
121      )
122    ) and
123    not (process.parent.executable : "C:\\Windows\\system32\\inetsrv\\appcmd.exe" and process.parent.args : "LIST") and
124    not process.parent.executable : (
125        "C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Monitoring Agent\\Agent\\MonitoringHost.exe",
126        "C:\\Program Files\\Cohesity\\cohesity_windows_agent_service.exe"
127    )
128  ) or
129  process.parent.name : ("wsmprovhost.exe", "w3wp.exe", "wmiprvse.exe", "rundll32.exe", "regsvr32.exe")
130)
131'''
132
133
134[[rule.threat]]
135framework = "MITRE ATT&CK"
136
137[[rule.threat.technique]]
138id = "T1033"
139name = "System Owner/User Discovery"
140reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1033/"
141
142[[rule.threat.technique]]
143id = "T1069"
144name = "Permission Groups Discovery"
145reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1069/"
146
147[rule.threat.tactic]
148id = "TA0007"
149name = "Discovery"
150reference = "https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0007/"