Elastic Security Detection Rules

Potential Pspy Process Monitoring Detected

Last updated 7 days ago on 2025-01-24
Created 2 years ago on 2023-07-20

About

This rule leverages auditd to monitor for processes scanning different processes within the /proc directory using the openat syscall. This is a strong indication for the usage of the pspy utility. Attackers may leverage the pspy process monitoring utility to monitor system processes without requiring root permissions, in order to find potential privilege escalation vectors.
Tags
Data Source: Auditd ManagerDomain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: DiscoveryLanguage: eql
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ Process Discovery (T1057)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ System Information Discovery (T1082)(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-auditd_manager.auditd-*
Related Integrations

auditd_manager(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
sequence by process.pid, host.id with maxspan=5s
  [file where host.os.type == "linux" and auditd.data.syscall == "openat" and file.path == "/proc" and
   auditd.data.a0 : ("ffffffffffffff9c", "ffffff9c") and auditd.data.a2 : ("80000", "88000") and
   not process.name in ("agentbeat", "packetbeat")
  ] with runs=10

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Pspy Process Monitoring Detected 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).