RPC (Remote Procedure Call) to the Internet

Last updated 18 days ago on 2026-04-24

Created 6 years ago on 2020-02-18

About

This rule detects network events that may indicate the use of RPC traffic to the Internet. RPC is commonly used by system administrators to remotely control a system for maintenance or to use shared resources. It should almost never be directly exposed to the Internet, as it is frequently targeted and exploited by threat actors as an initial access or backdoor vector.

Tags

Tactic: Initial AccessTactic: Lateral MovementDomain: EndpointUse Case: Threat DetectionData Source: PAN-OSData Source: Network TrafficLanguage: kuery

Severity

high

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Initial Access (TA0001)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Lateral Movement (TA0008)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Remote Services (T1021)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

License

Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type

Query (Kibana Query Language)

Integration Pack

Prebuilt Security Detection Rules

Index Patterns

logs-network_traffic.*logs-panw.panos*

Related Integrations

network_traffic(external, opens in a new tab or window)

panw(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗(data_stream.dataset: network_traffic.flow or (event.category: (network or network_traffic))) and
  network.transport:tcp and (destination.port:135 or data_stream.dataset:zeek.dce_rpc) and
  source.ip:(
    10.0.0.0/8 or
    172.16.0.0/12 or
    192.168.0.0/16
  ) and
  not destination.ip:(
    10.0.0.0/8 or
    127.0.0.0/8 or
    169.254.0.0/16 or
    172.16.0.0/12 or
    192.0.0.0/24 or
    192.0.0.0/29 or
    192.0.0.8/32 or
    192.0.0.9/32 or
    192.0.0.10/32 or
    192.0.0.170/32 or
    192.0.0.171/32 or
    192.0.2.0/24 or
    192.31.196.0/24 or
    192.52.193.0/24 or
    192.168.0.0/16 or
    192.88.99.0/24 or
    224.0.0.0/4 or
    100.64.0.0/10 or
    192.175.48.0/24 or
    198.18.0.0/15 or
    198.51.100.0/24 or
    203.0.113.0/24 or
    240.0.0.0/4 or
    "::1" or
    "FE80::/10" or
    "FF00::/8"
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect RPC (Remote Procedure Call) to the Internet in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(external, opens in a new tab or window).