Adversaries frequently rename malicious executables to mimic legitimate system processes (like ‘svchost.exe’) and place them in atypical directories (like Temp) to evade basic detection. The zero in ‘svch0st’ is a common obfuscation technique. Falcon’s machine learning and behavioral analysis would correctly identify the anomalous location and the masquerading attempt, making this the most likely scenario.

In CrowdStrike’s terminology, a Detection represents a single piece of malicious activity identified by the sensor (e.g., a malicious process, a suspicious network connection). An Incident is an investigative workspace that aggregates multiple related Detections, host information, and adversary intelligence to provide context for a broader attack campaign. This grouping is crucial for efficient investigation and response.

The Process Tree visualization within the Detection details is the fastest way to see the full context of the activity. It will show the parent process that initiated the WMI subscription, the command-line arguments used, and any child processes. This context allows you to distinguish between a malicious script (e.g., launched from a user’s Downloads folder) and a legitimate management tool (e.g., launched from a known admin workstation or via a system account).

The Real Time Response (RTR) feature is the built-in, sanctioned method for interactive forensic collection. The `get` command allows you to pull specific files, and more importantly, the pre-packaged `cs_win_forensics` script is designed to automatically collect a standardized set of critical forensic artifacts (prefetch files, event logs, registry hives, etc.) from a Windows system and package them for download, ensuring consistency and efficiency.

For firewall changes to take full effect on Windows systems, a reboot is often required, especially for certain rule types or when modifying core Windows Firewall settings. The ‘Pending’ status in Falcon specifically means the policy has been received by the sensor, but a pending reboot is needed to complete the installation. This is a common real-world scenario that administrators must account for in their change management processes.

Setting an action to ‘Detect’ creates a ‘light-on’ or ‘report-only’ mode for that prevention rule. This is a critical strategy for safely testing new detection logic, understanding its potential impact in a production environment, and gathering intelligence on adversary behavior without causing operational disruption. It allows security teams to validate detections and tune rules before enabling active blocking (‘Block’ action).

While `schtasks /query` and `Get-ScheduledTask` are valid native commands, the most effective and consistent method within the Falcon RTR framework is to use the `runscript` command with a pre-defined, CrowdStrike-hosted script. The `’ListScheduledTasks’` script (or a similar named script in the CrowdStrike script library) is optimized for forensic investigation, often providing more detailed output and better handling of various system states than a simple one-line native command executed via RTR.

CrowdStrike aligns its detection taxonomy with the MITRE ATT&CK framework. The ‘Objective’ field maps to high-level MITRE Tactics. ‘Credential Access’ (TA0006) is the tactic focused on stealing account names and passwords. ‘OS Credential Dumping’ (T1003) is a specific technique under that tactic. The other options belong to different tactics: Initial Access (T1189), Impact (T1486), and Inhibit System Recovery (T1489).

Event Search is Falcon’s powerful log search and analytics module. It allows hunters and analysts to write custom queries (using its query language) against a vast repository of telemetry data, including network connections (NetworkEvents), DNS requests, process executions, and more. You can construct a query to find `NetworkEvents` where the `RemoteIP` equals the malicious IP within the specified timeframe, providing a list of all affected hosts.

Adversaries frequently rename malicious executables to mimic legitimate system processes (like ‘svchost.exe’) and place them in atypical directories (like Temp) to evade basic detection. The zero in ‘svch0st’ is a common obfuscation technique. Falcon’s machine learning and behavioral analysis would correctly identify the anomalous location and the masquerading attempt, making this the most likely scenario.0