Container Management Utility Execution Detected via Defend for Containers

Last updated 16 days ago on 2026-07-29
Created 3 years ago on 2023-04-26

About

This rule detects when a container management binary is run from inside a container. These binaries are critical components of many containerized environments, and their presence and execution in unauthorized containers could indicate compromise or a misconfiguration.
Tags
Data Source: Elastic Defend for ContainersDomain: ContainerOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: ExecutionLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

Execution (TA0002)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Discovery (TA0007)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

False Positive Examples
There is a potential for false positives if the container is used for legitimate administrative tasks that require the use of container management utilities, such as deploying, scaling, or updating containerized applications. It is important to investigate any alerts generated by this rule to determine if they are indicative of malicious activity or part of legitimate container activity.
License
Elastic License v2(external, opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

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

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

Query
text code block:
process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action == "exec" and ( process.name in ("dockerd", "kubelet", "kube-proxy", "kubectl", "containerd", "systemd", "crictl") or ( /* Account for tools that execute utilities as a subprocess, in this case the target utility name will appear as a process arg */ process.name in ("bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "busybox") and process.args in ( "dockerd", "/bin/dockerd", "/usr/bin/dockerd", "/usr/local/bin/dockerd", "kubelet", "/bin/kubelet", "/usr/bin/kubelet", "/usr/local/bin/kubelet", "kube-proxy", "/bin/kube-proxy", "/usr/bin/kube-proxy", "/usr/local/bin/kube-proxy", "kubectl", "/bin/kubectl", "/usr/bin/kubectl", "/usr/local/bin/kubectl", "containerd", "/bin/containerd", "/usr/bin/containerd", "/usr/local/bin/containerd", "systemd", "/bin/systemd", "/usr/bin/systemd", "/usr/local/bin/systemd", "crictl", "/bin/crictl", "/usr/bin/crictl", "/usr/local/bin/crictl" ) and /* default exclusion list to not FP on default multi-process commands */ not process.args in ( "which", "/bin/which", "/usr/bin/which", "/usr/local/bin/which", "man", "/bin/man", "/usr/bin/man", "/usr/local/bin/man", "chmod", "/bin/chmod", "/usr/bin/chmod", "/usr/local/bin/chmod", "chown", "/bin/chown", "/usr/bin/chown", "/usr/local/bin/chown" ) ) ) and container.id like "*" and not ( process.parent.executable in ("/sbin/init", "/usr/bin/dockerd", "/usr/bin/runc", "/usr/bin/containerd-shim-runc-v2") or process.working_directory == "/aws" or (process.parent.args == "init" and process.parent.args == "runc") or (process.parent.name == "busybox" and process.name == "kubectl") )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Container Management Utility Execution Detected via Defend for Containers 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).