pcalua.exe

Each abuse is LOLBAS's category and the options and words it uses; the full write-up is on LOLBAS's page for pcalua.exe.

pcalua.exe -a {PATH:.exe}

pcalua.exe -a {PATH_SMB:.dll}

pcalua.exe -a {PATH_ABSOLUTE:.cpl} -c Java

All 3 commands the identifier reads trip a Sigma process-creation rule. These commands and their descriptions are from LOLBAS’s entry for pcalua.exe, by Oddvar Moe, at commit 2056cb766250 of 2026-09-26, under the GPL-3.0 and LOLBAS’s notice, with no warranty. Changed: Markdown is shown formatted. The source is in lolbas-gtfobins-commands.json.gz, and the full entry is on LOLBAS’s page for pcalua.exe. The identifier reads each with LOLBAS’s placeholders filled in: a URL as https://example.com/file, a share as \\192.0.2.10\share\file, a path as C:\Data\file and a command as calc.exe.

7 known copies

From the file’s version info and the copies recorded by xCyclopedia (MIT). A copy in another folder, signed by someone else or with another hash is not necessarily malicious, but it is worth a closer look. In Ceplin, "<sha256>".whatis() says which known copy a hash is.