Suspicious Termination of ESXI Process

Last updated 6 months ago on 2025-02-04
Created 2 years ago on 2023-04-11

About

Identifies instances where VMware processes, such as "vmware-vmx" or "vmx," are terminated on a Linux system by a "kill" command. The rule monitors for the "end" event type, which signifies the termination of a process. The presence of a "kill" command as the parent process for terminating VMware processes may indicate that a threat actor is attempting to interfere with the virtualized environment on the targeted system.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: ImpactData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: Elastic EndgameLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Impact (TA0040)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
Event Correlation Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
endgame-*logs-endpoint.events.process*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "end" and process.name in ("vmware-vmx", "vmx")
and process.parent.name == "kill"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Suspicious Termination of ESXI Process 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(opens in a new tab or window).