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Microsoft Build Engine Started by an Office Application

An instance of MSBuild, the Microsoft Build Engine, was started by an Office application. This is unusual behavior for the Build Engine and could have been caused by a malicious document executing a script payload.

Detection logic

Its licence does not clear it for publishing here

Sunturai publishes a detection's own text where the licence it arrived under has been reviewed and permits it, and Elastic License 2.0 has not. The query as its source wrote it, its canonical form and the hash that pins this revision are in the workspace record.

Detection requirements

Platform
ContainersIaaSLinuxmacOSWindows

The rule states no platform. This is derived from the 2 ATT&CK techniques it maps to.

Log source category
event_index

Known benign triggers

  • The Build Engine is commonly used by Windows developers but use by non-engineers is unusual. It is quite unusual for this program to be started by an Office application like Word or Excel.

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