Elastic Security Detection Rules

SOCKS Traffic from an Unusual Process

Last updated 9 days ago on 2025-11-17
Created 9 days ago on 2025-11-17

About

This detection correlates FortiGate's application control SOCKS events with Elastic Defend network event to identify the source process performing SOCKS traffic. Adversaries may use a connection proxy to direct network traffic between systems or act as an intermediary for network communications to a command and control server to avoid direct connections to their infrastructure.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxOS: WindowsOS: macOSUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Command and ControlData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: FortinetLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

Command and Control (TA0011)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Proxy (T1090)(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
logs-endpoint.events.network-*logs-fortinet_fortigate.log-*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

fortinet_fortigate(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by source.port, source.ip, destination.ip with maxspan=1m
 [network where event.dataset == "fortinet_fortigate.log" and event.action == "signature" and network.application in ("SOCKS4", "SOCKS5")]
 [network where event.module == "endpoint" and event.action in ("disconnect_received", "connection_attempted")]

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect SOCKS Traffic from an Unusual 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).