System Binary Symlink to Suspicious Location

Last updated 14 days ago on 2025-04-30
Created 14 days ago on 2025-04-30

About

This rule detects the creation of a symbolic link from a system binary to a suspicious and writable location. This activity may indicate an attacker's attempt to evade detection by behavioral rules that depend on predefined process parent/child relationships. By executing the symlinked variant of a binary instead of the original, the attacker aims to bypass these rules. Through the new_terms rule type, this rule can identify uncommon parent processes that may indicate the presence of a malicious symlink.
Tags
Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: Elastic DefendLanguage: kuery
Severity
low
Risk Score
21
MITRE ATT&CK™

Defense Evasion (TA0005)(opens in a new tab or window)

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

Definition

Rule Type
New Terms Rule
Integration Pack
Prebuilt Security Detection Rules
Index Patterns
logs-endpoint.events.process*
Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

Query
host.os.type:linux and event.category:process and event.type:start and event.action:exec and process.parent.executable:* and
(process.name:ln or process.name:busybox and process.args:ln or process.name:cp and process.args:--symbolic-link) and
process.args:(
  (
    /bin/* or /lib/* or /lib64/* or /sbin/* or /usr/bin/* or /usr/lib/* or /usr/lib64/* or /usr/local/bin/* or
    /usr/local/lib/* or /usr/local/lib64/* or /usr/local/sbin/* or /usr/sbin/*
  ) and (
    /*/.* or /dev/shm/* or /home/* or /root/* or /tmp/* or /var/tmp/*
  ) and
  not (/usr/bin/coreutils or /tmp/mkinitcpio* or /var/tmp/dracut* or /var/tmp/mkinitramfs*)
)

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect System Binary Symlink to Suspicious Location 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).