Potential Reverse Shell via Suspicious Child Process

Last updated 6 months ago on 2025-02-04
Created 2 years ago on 2023-07-04

About

This detection rule detects the creation of a shell through a suspicious process chain. Any reverse shells spawned by the specified utilities that are initialized from a single process followed by a network connection attempt will be captured through this rule. Attackers may spawn reverse shells to establish persistence onto a target system.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: ExecutionData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: eql
Severity
medium
Risk Score
47
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

Command and Control (TA0011)(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-endpoint.events.process*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by host.id, process.entity_id with maxspan=1s
  [process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action in ("exec", "fork") and (
    (process.name : "python*" and process.args : "-c" and process.args : (
     "*import*pty*spawn*", "*import*subprocess*call*"
    )) or
    (process.name : "perl*" and process.args : "-e" and process.args : "*socket*" and process.args : (
     "*exec*", "*system*"
    )) or
    (process.name : "ruby*" and process.args : ("-e", "-rsocket") and process.args : (
     "*TCPSocket.new*", "*TCPSocket.open*"
     )) or
    (process.name : "lua*" and process.args : "-e" and process.args : "*socket.tcp*" and process.args : (
     "*io.popen*", "*os.execute*"
    )) or
    (process.name : "php*" and process.args : "-r" and process.args : "*fsockopen*" and process.args : "*/bin/*sh*") or
    (process.name : ("awk", "gawk", "mawk", "nawk") and process.args : "*/inet/tcp/*") or
    (process.name : "openssl" and process.args : "-connect") or
    (process.name : ("nc", "ncat", "netcat") and process.args == "-e" and process.args_count >= 3 and
     not process.args == "-z") or
    (process.name : "telnet" and process.args_count >= 3)
  ) and process.parent.name : (
    "bash", "dash", "sh", "tcsh", "csh", "zsh", "ksh", "fish", "python*", "php*", "perl", "ruby", "lua*",
    "openssl", "nc", "netcat", "ncat", "telnet", "awk")]
  [network where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and event.action in ("connection_attempted", "connection_accepted") and
    process.name : ("python*", "php*", "perl", "ruby", "lua*", "openssl", "nc", "netcat", "ncat", "telnet", "awk") and
    destination.ip != null and not cidrmatch(destination.ip, "127.0.0.0/8", "169.254.0.0/16", "224.0.0.0/4", "::1")]

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Reverse Shell via Suspicious Child 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).