W3wp exe running

Web shells allow attackers to run commands on servers to steal data or use the server as launch pad for other activities like credential theft, lateral movement, deployment of additional payloads, or hands-on-keyboard activity, while allowing attackers to persist in an affected organization. As web shells are increasingly more common in attacks, both commodity and targeted, we continue to monitor and investigate this trend to ensure customers are protected.

In this blog, we will discuss challenges in detecting web shells, and the Microsoft technologies and investigation tools available today that organizations can use to defend against these threats. We will also share guidance for hardening networks against web shell attacks. Attackers install web shells on servers by taking advantage of security gaps, typically vulnerabilities in web applications, in internet-facing servers. These attackers scan the internet, often using public scanning interfaces like shodan.

They may use previously fixed vulnerabilities that unfortunately remain unpatched in many servers, but they are also known to quickly take advantage of newly disclosed vulnerabilities. The vulnerability is a directory traversal bug with a CVSS score of 9. Just four days later, on July 4, exploit code was added to a Metasploit module. The following day, Microsoft researchers started seeing the exploit being used by attackers to upload a web shell to vulnerable servers.

The web shell was used to run common cryptocurrency miners. In the days that followed, industry security researchers saw the exploit being broadly used to deploy web shells, with multiple variants surfacing not long after. This incident demonstrates the importance of keeping servers up to date and hardened against web shell attacks.

Web servers are frequently accessible from the internet and can be used by attackers to gain access to a network. Once installed on a server, web shells serve as one of the most effective means of persistence in an enterprise. We frequently see cases where web shells are used solely as a persistence mechanism. Web shells guarantee that a backdoor exists in a compromised network, because an attacker leaves a malicious implant after establishing an initial foothold on a server.

If left undetected, web shells provide a way for attackers to continue to gather data from and monetize the networks that they have access to. Compromise recovery cannot be successful and enduring without locating and removing attacker persistence mechanisms. And while rebuilding a single compromised system is a great solution, restoring existing assets is the only feasible option for many.

So, finding and removing all backdoors is a critical aspect of compromise recovery. And this brings us back to the challenge of web shell detection.

As we mentioned earlier, web shells can be generalized as a means of executing arbitrary attacker input by way of an implant. The first challenge is dealing with just how many ways an attacker can execute code.

Web applications support a great array of languages and frameworks and, thus, provide a high degree of flexibility and compatibility that attackers take advantage of. In addition, the volume of network traffic plus the usual noise of constant internet attacks means that targeted traffic aimed at a web server can blend right in, making detection of web shells a lot harder and requiring advanced behavior-based detections that can identify and stop malicious activities that hide in plain sight.

Web shells can be built using any of several languages that are popular with web applications. A worker process runs as an executables file named W3wp.

The worker process is controlled by the www service. Sunil Patil Sunil Patil 6 6 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. You can get more information on w3wp. Chris Chris 13 2 2 bronze badges. Chris Kooken had answered this three years before your answer. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password.

Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Podcast Making Agile work for data science. Stack Gives Back Featured on Meta. New post summary designs on greatest hits now, everywhere else eventually. Linked 3. They have two basic settings which are related to the version of. NET being used. IIS application pools also provide a bunch of advanced settings.

These impact the behavior of w3wp and your IIS worker process. Including things like what Windows user account it runs as, auto restarting of the process, auto shutdown, and more. It is also possible for one IIS application pool to create multiple IIS worker processes in what is called a web garden.

Via the Windows Task Manager, you can see processes named w3wp. Within the IIS management console, you can view more details. Open IIS manager and on the left side click on the name of your computer. You will then see a similar list of icons on the right as shown in the screenshot below. On the Worker Processes screen, you can see more details than you would be able to see from Windows Task Manager.

If you want to go even a step further, you can double click on a worker process to see which web requests are currently executing within your IIS worker process. There is one key thing you need to know about IIS application pools that are a little confusing. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for this specific hotfix.

For a complete list of Microsoft Customer Service and Support telephone numbers or to create a separate service request, visit the following Microsoft Web site:. If you do not see your language, it is because a hotfix is not available for that language. To apply this hotfix, your computer must be running one of the following Windows operating systems:. For more information about how to obtain a Windows Vista service pack, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:.

The English United States version of this hotfix installs files that have the attributes that are listed in the following tables. The dates and the times for these files on your local computer are displayed in your local time together with your current daylight saving time DST bias. Additionally, the dates and the times may change when you perform certain operations on the files.

Important Windows Vista hotfixes and Windows Server hotfixes are included in the same packages. However, only "Windows Vista" is listed on the Hotfix Request page. To request the hotfix package that applies to one or both operating systems, select the hotfix that is listed under "Windows Vista" on the page. Always refer to the "Applies To" section in articles to determine the actual operating system that each hotfix applies to.