Potential Reverse Shell Activity via Terminal

Elastic Stack Serverless Security

Identifies the execution of a shell process with suspicious arguments which may be indicative of reverse shell activity.

Rule type: eql

Rule indices:

• auditbeat-*
• logs-endpoint.events.*

Severity: high

Risk score: 73

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:

• https://github.com/swisskyrepo/PayloadsAllTheThings/blob/master/Methodology%20and%20Resources/Reverse%20Shell%20Cheatsheet.md
• https://github.com/WangYihang/Reverse-Shell-Manager
• https://www.netsparker.com/blog/web-security/understanding-reverse-shells/

Tags:

• Elastic
• Host
• Linux
• macOS
• Threat Detection
• Execution

Version: 4

Rule authors:

• Elastic

Rule license: Elastic License v2

process where event.type in ("start", "process_started") and
  process.name in ("sh", "bash", "zsh", "dash", "zmodload") and
  process.args : ("*/dev/tcp/*", "*/dev/udp/*", "*zsh/net/tcp*", "*zsh/net/udp*") and

  /* noisy FPs */
  not (process.parent.name : "timeout" and process.executable : "/var/lib/docker/overlay*") and
  not process.command_line : ("*/dev/tcp/sirh_db/*", "*/dev/tcp/remoteiot.com/*", "*dev/tcp/elk.stag.one/*", "*dev/tcp/kafka/*", "*/dev/tcp/$0/$1*", "*/dev/tcp/127.*", "*/dev/udp/127.*", "*/dev/tcp/localhost/*") and
  not process.parent.command_line : "runc init"

Framework: MITRE ATT&CKTM

• Tactic:

  • Name: Execution
  • ID: TA0002
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/tactics/TA0002/

• Technique:

  • Name: Command and Scripting Interpreter
  • ID: T1059
  • Reference URL: https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1059/