Hosts File Modified

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

The hosts file on endpoints is used to control manual IP address to hostname resolutions. The hosts file is the first point of lookup for DNS hostname resolution so if adversaries can modify the endpoint hosts file, they can route traffic to malicious infrastructure. This rule detects modifications to the hosts file on Microsoft Windows, Linux (Ubuntu or RHEL) and macOS systems.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

auditbeat-*
winlogbeat-*
logs-endpoint.events.*
logs-windows.*

Severity: medium

Risk score: 47

Runs every: 5m

Searches indices from: now-9m (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/common-options.html#date-math[Date Math format], see also Additional look-back time)

Maximum alerts per execution: 100

References:

/beats/docs/reference/ingestion-tools/beats-auditbeat/auditbeat-reference-yml.md

Tags:

Elastic
Host
Linux
Windows
macOS
Threat Detection
Impact

Version: 9

Rule authors:

Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

Investigation guide

Config

For Windows systems using Auditbeat, this rule requires adding C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc as an additional path in the 'file_integrity' module of auditbeat.yml.

If enabling an EQL rule on a non-elastic-agent index (such as beats) for versions <8.2, events will not define event.ingested and default fallback for EQL rules was not added until 8.2, so you will need to add a custom pipeline to populate event.ingested to @timestamp for this rule to work.

Rule query

		any where

  /* file events for creation; file change events are not captured by some of the included sources for linux and so may
     miss this, which is the purpose of the process + command line args logic below */
  (
   event.category == "file" and event.type in ("change", "creation") and
     file.path : ("/private/etc/hosts", "/etc/hosts", "?:\\Windows\\System32\\drivers\\etc\\hosts")
  )
  or

  /* process events for change targeting linux only */
  (
   event.category == "process" and event.type in ("start") and
     process.name in ("nano", "vim", "vi", "emacs", "echo", "sed") and
     process.args : ("/etc/hosts")
  )

	

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

Tactic:
- Name: Impact
- ID: TA0040
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0040/
Technique:
- Name: Data Manipulation
- ID: T1565
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1565/
Sub-technique:
- Name: Stored Data Manipulation
- ID: T1565.001
- Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1565/001/