Sysmon.exe
Summary
Microsoft Sysinternals System Monitor (32-bit) - advanced system monitoring tool that logs process creation, network connections, and file changes to Windows Event Log.
Sysmon.exe is the 619th most commonly executed Windows program in EchoTrail's dataset, observed 7,245 times across enterprise environments. It typically runs from C:\Windows and it is most often launched by services.exe.
Behavior
Top Paths
- C:\Windows99.83%
- C:\Users\...0.17%
Top Hashes (SHA256)
- bc6a579553f1cafec84ffc1baea3ec6fa5656ed207d3e8177798070c4f71e53e91.46%
- ee067d135d799e98aa5de5cbd10d13a087721a982b7bff4d6c1678c33d0ed9fb4.55%
- 3c67460107b00d6ec9cc26ab8928c9c3a0eb16102ceff60f75487ce74a0639753.88%
- de2d6b0260566ef4a485ad3ffb4a57095419ac503c3a405cb62c5f698a5d69500.04%
- efb329554564d065d47d0f96d7688d3f1cd08d00e3d23293ca1412f19926ad670.04%
- 56499af33e42c43330fc0d051cb45e552a432e3132d5132d43c0da133ead33fd0.01%
- d6db47af473f0ae6985bd9a072f9bb439dad7dd425b0936d92bcc63b9d3e771c0.01%
Process Ancestry
Top Grandparents
- wininit.exe99.82%
- cmd.exe0.14%
- explorer.exe0.05%
Top Parents
- services.exe99.82%
- Sysmon.exe0.08%
- cmd.exe0.07%
- explorer.exe0.03%
Top Children
- WerFault.exe88.73%
- regsvr32.exe4.41%
- conhost.exe2.45%
- Sysmon.exe2.45%
- cacls.exe1.47%
- net1.exe0.49%
Rare or environment-specific process names are omitted from ancestry tables. Percentages are of all observed relationships.
Security Analysis
What does Sysmon.exe normally do?
Same as sysmon64.exe but 32-bit version. Less common on modern 64-bit systems.
When is Sysmon.exe suspicious?
Same as sysmon64.exe. Service stopped or configuration tampered with.
How do attackers abuse Sysmon.exe?
Same as sysmon64.exe. Attackers target Sysmon for defense evasion.
Detection guidance
Same as sysmon64.exe.
False positive notes
Same as sysmon64.exe.
Related Processes
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Data from EchoTrail's dataset of ~346M Windows process executions. Last extracted 2026-08-04.