PowerShell Alias Creation for High-Risk Cmdlets

Christopher Scott@Scocha

•updated Jun 7, 2026•9•0•19

This rule detects the creation of PowerShell aliases for high-risk cmdlets or .NET web client patterns. Adversaries may use 'Set-Alias' to create short, obfuscated aliases for common cmdlets like Invoke-WebRequest, Invoke-Expression, or cmdlets related to Defender tampering, making their command-line activity harder to detect and analyze. This detection focuses on the 'ProcessCreated' event for PowerShell processes where 'Set-Alias' is used to map to a predefined list of suspicious cmdlets or patterns.