Potentially Suspicious Process Started via tmux or screen

Last updated 5 months ago on 2025-03-20

Created 2 years ago on 2023-09-04

About

This rule monitors for the execution of suspicious commands via screen and tmux. When launching a command and detaching directly, the commands will be executed in the background via its parent process. Attackers may leverage screen or tmux to execute commands while attempting to evade detection.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: LinuxUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: Defense EvasionData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: CrowdstrikeData Source: SentinelOneLanguage: eql

Severity

low

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

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

↳ System Binary Proxy Execution (T1218)(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

endgame-*logs-crowdstrike.fdr*logs-endpoint.events.process*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*

Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

crowdstrike(opens in a new tab or window)

sentinel_one_cloud_funnel(opens in a new tab or window)

Query

process where host.os.type == "linux" and event.type == "start" and
  event.action in ("exec", "exec_event", "start", "ProcessRollup2") and
  process.parent.name in ("screen", "tmux") and process.name like (
    "nmap", "nc", "ncat", "netcat", "socat", "nc.openbsd", "ngrok", "ping", "java", "php*", "perl", "ruby", "lua*",
    "openssl", "telnet", "wget", "curl", "id"
  )

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potentially Suspicious Process Started via tmux or screen 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).