Individual skill
hunting-for-lateral-movement-via-wmi
Detects WMI-based lateral movement (e.g. wmic process call create, Win32_Process.Create()) by analyzing Windows Event ID 4688 and Sysmon Event ID 1 for WmiPrvSE.exe spawning suspicious child processes like cmd.exe or powershell.exe, plus WMI-Activity/Operational events 5857/5860/5861 for subscription-based persistence. Use when hunting for remote code execution via WMI or investigating lateral movement across Windows hosts.
skills/hunting-for-lateral-movement-via-wmi/SKILL.md
Source commit 54a798831d2266a3ca61ce68a7acb80b81160d57
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- Matches the observed repository HEAD
- Yes
- Scanner rules are current
- No
- Repository scan complete
- No
- Skill scan complete
- Yes
- Observed behavior
- Not checked yet
- Last checked
- Nov 9, 2026
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Repository context
- Repository stars (not skill ratings)
- 35,972
- Repository last updated
- Aug 31, 2026
- License
- Apache-2.0
Observed agent integration: No specific integration evidence. Standard SKILL.md installation does not imply verified compatibility.
- ai-agents Repository topic
- claude-code Repository topic
- cybersecurity Repository topic
- incident-response Repository topic
- mitre-attack Repository topic
- penetration-testing Repository topic
- red-team Repository topic
- security Repository topic
- cloud-security Repository topic
- malware-analysis Repository topic
- threat-hunting Declared skill tag
- lateral-movement Declared skill tag
- wmi Declared skill tag
- sysmon Declared skill tag
- mitre-attack Declared skill tag
- process-creation Declared skill tag
- security Derived category
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LICENSEasset · 11,255 bytesSKILL.mdcore · 2,636 bytesreferences/api-reference.mddoc · 2,584 bytesscripts/agent.pyruns · 8,153 bytes
Read excerpt
# Hunting for Lateral Movement via WMI
## Overview
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is commonly abused for lateral movement via `wmic process call create` or Win32_Process.Create() to execute commands on remote hosts. Detection focuses on identifying WmiPrvSE.exe spawning child processes (cmd.exe, powershell.exe) in Windows Security Event ID 4688 and Sysmon Event ID 1 logs, along with WMI-Activity/Operational events (5857, 5860, 5861) for event subscription persistence.
## When to Use
- When investigating security incidents that require hunting for lateral movement via wmi
- When building detection rules or threat hunting queries for this domain
- When SOC analysts need structured procedures for this analysis type
- When validating security monitoring coverage for related attack techniques
## Prerequisites