Potential ICMP Tunneling Activity to the Internet

Last updated 2 months ago on 2026-06-25

Created 2 months ago on 2026-06-25

About

Identifies ICMP Echo traffic from an internal host to an external destination with a larger-than-typical transaction size. Covert channels and ICMP tunneling tools embed data in echo payloads that exceed normal OS ping behavior, which is usually limited to small fixed-size packets.

Tags

Domain: NetworkTactic: Command and ControlUse Case: Threat DetectionUse Case: Network Security MonitoringData Source: Network TrafficLanguage: kuery

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Non-Application Layer Protocol (T1095)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Protocol Tunneling (T1572)(external, opens in a new tab or window)

License

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

Definition

Rule Type: New Terms Rule
Integration Pack: Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns: logs-network_traffic.icmp-*
Related Integrations: network_traffic(external, opens in a new tab or window)
Query

✄𐘗text code block:
✄𐘗data_stream.dataset:network_traffic.icmp
  and (network_traffic.icmp.request.type:(8 or 128) or icmp.request.type:(8 or 128))
  and network.transport:(icmp or ipv6-icmp)
  and source.ip:(10.0.0.0/8 or 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16 or "FC00::/7")
  and network.bytes >= 256
  and not destination.ip:(
    10.0.0.0/8 or 100.64.0.0/10 or 127.0.0.0/8 or 169.254.0.0/16 or 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16 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 192.175.48.0/24 or 192.31.196.0/24 or 192.52.193.0/24 or 192.88.99.0/24 or
    198.18.0.0/15 or 198.51.100.0/24 or 203.0.113.0/24 or 224.0.0.0/4 or 240.0.0.0/4 or "::1" or "FC00::/7" or
    "FE80::/10" or "FF00::/8"
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential ICMP Tunneling Activity 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).